California Chrome © Benoit Photo
Del Mar has seen its share of great horses parade through its grounds over the years. From the early days when the likes of Seabiscuit and Native Diver raced to the late 20th century when top horses like Precisionist, Best Pal and Wickerr ruled the track. For one not-so shining moment in 1996 when Cigar showed up to the 2000’s when Zenyatta, Beholder, American Pharoah and Flightline thrilled racing fans.
Today three horses who dominated their divisions and raced at one time or another at Del Mar will be inducted into the racing’s Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs. Arrogate, Songbird and California Chrome all take their places next to the greats of the sport.
Let’s start with Arrogate, who went on such a tear in 2016-17 that he remains the top money earner of all-time. The son of Unbridled’s Song won $17,422,600, most of which came in a span of about seven months starting with his stunning run in the G1 Travers at Saratoga in August of 2016. Stunning in the sense that Arrogate was coming out of allowance company. He had won a second level allowance at Del Mar and was 11-1 when they popped the gates in the Travers. He led them wire-to-wire and won by a whopping 13 ½ lengths. He took down his biggest paycheck to that point, $670,000, a pittance compared to what was to come.
“Just an incredible horse,” jockey Mike Smith says. “That four-race run that he had is like no other. We lost him way too soon as a stallion. As you can see, his babies are starting to show who he was.“
Smith hopped onboard Arrogate for the first time in the Travers and would remain his permanent jockey for his remaining six races. But it was the first four outings that stick out for the Hall of Fame rider.
“They were all just so impressive,” Smith says. “Especially going a mile and a quarter, he was like a runaway train. He would get faster and faster and faster. We just never seem to hit the bottom of him.”
The big gray/roan was trained by Bob Baffert.
Arrogate
“He was one of the greatest horses I ever trained,” Baffert recalls. “American Pharoah strung some races together, Justify, too…but Arrogate. His Travers win was unbelievable. A track record. He beat the field by 10, 11 lengths, and a good field.”
Showing the Travers was no fluke, Arrogate simply went out and won the Breeders’ Cup Classic in his next outing, outdueling fellow Hall of Fame inductee, California Chrome and collecting the $3.3 million first-place earnings.
“Most exciting Breeders’ Cup I’ve been involved in,” Baffert says.
“He beat California Chrome,” Smith adds, “when ‘Chrome’ was probably at his best. For him to do that, so lightly raced, to beat a horse of that caliber is incredible.”
Sensing he had something special on his hands, Baffert brought Arrogate back in the G1 Pegasus World Cup and he won handily, pocketing the $7-million prize money.
“Totally decimated that field,” Baffert remembers. “Set a track record.”
The coup de gras came two months later in the Dubai World Cup. Literally left at the gate, Arrogate pulled off one of the most unbelievable comebacks of all-time.
“It has to be the best Dubai Cup race ever,” Smith says. “You see the horses behind him and who he beat. He got wiped out at the start and I was, ‘I can’t believe it. We come all this way and this happens.’ But I got those negative thoughts out of my head right away and just thought, one step at a time. Let’s just creep back into this. See if we can salvage at least a good placing.
“Then halfway down the backside I thought, ‘Man, I got a shot,” Smith continues. “Maybe I’ll make second or something. He just kept getting faster and faster. By the time we rounded the quarter pole I thought ‘Not only is he going to win, he’s going to win well in hand.’ It was crazy. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
“Gets left, is dead last going into the first turn,” Baffert says. “Just a toss out. Then he comes, just galloping by Gun Runner. It was kind of his ‘drop the mic’ race.”
His stirring last-to-first performance won him another $6 million giving him $17 million in four races.
“Great horses do stuff like that,” Smith says. “but for what happened to him at the start and the caliber of horses that were in there, horses like Gun Runner who never got beat again, for him to run them down the way he did you couldn’t make that up. Actually, you’d have to make it up.”
Upon his return to the States, Arrogate never seemed to be the same dominating horse. He ran his final three races at Del Mar. In his first race back he finished a distant fourth in the G2 San Diego. Undeterred, Baffert ran him back in the G1 Pacific Classic and he finished second to Collected.
“He came back here and something happened,” Baffert says. “He was moving well, he just wasn’t pushing off. Down the road he had something in his spine and looking back, after Dubai, maybe I should have turned him out.”
His final race was a fifth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar, won by Gun Runner. Afterwards, the connections decided to retire him to stud. He died unexpectedly in May of 2020
“I was just blessed to keep the weight on his back,” Smith says when asked how much of Arrogate’s performances could be credited to Smith’s riding skills. “I had a leg on each side and I’m in the middle. Just tried to keep him happy and comfortable wherever that was at. Once I would do that it was just a matter of pointing him in the right direction.”
Smith also had the privilege to ride Songbird, who also will be inducted into the Hall on Friday. She was a beautiful dark bay/brown mare by Medaglia d’Oro out of Ivanavinalot. She broke her maiden by 6 ½ lengths at Del Mar on July 26, 2015 and served notice with an impressive 5 ¼ length victory in the Del Mar Debutante six weeks later.
Songbird © Benoit Photo
“Just an unbelievable, brilliant mare,” Smith says. “She was incredible. She wanted to please at all times. Never was there a bad moment in her career. Everything was forward, just waiting for you to call on her anytime. She always gave you 110%.”
Smith rode Songbird in all 15 of her races. She would end up winning 11 straight, a win streak that lasted until November of 2016 when she lost to the mighty Beholder in one of the most thrilling Breeders’ Cup races ever run.
“She had a tough campaign, going back-and-forth,” Smith remembers heading into the Breeders’ Cup. “It’s hard to do going from the west to the east, east to the west. You wouldn’t have her quite where you wanted her weight-wise and look who beat her, so hats off to her. There honestly wasn’t a loser in that race. I was in front before and a jump after, she (Beholder) was just in front at the right time.”
In between her maiden win and the Breeders’ Cup loss were seven grade one victories, including the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies; the Santa Anita Oaks; the Coaching Club American Oaks, and the Alabama at Saratoga and the Cotillion at Parx.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” trainer Jerry Hollendorfer says of Songbird’s induction. “She was one who came into the barn and the first time you worked her we knew she was a good horse.”
“In all of her races she was so professional,” Smith recalls. “I don’t think there was ever a time she didn’t leave the gate in front. She would walk in there and just point straight down the racetrack and just wait for them to open. She was always the first one out of there and then she would just wait on you: ‘Tell me what you want, what do you want me to do?’”
The loss in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff was just a bump in the road for Songbird, She returned the following spring and won the G1 Ogden Phipps at Belmont Park and the G1 Delaware Handicap at Delaware Park.
“Going back east and her winning the races she won back east,” Smith says when asked about his most memorable races on Songbird. “All of them and she beat some really good mares. They would come at her because she was a quick mare and they would think ‘We’ll just run her into the ground,’ but they just made her run faster.”
“She had it all,” Hollendorfer notes. “Looks, size and she had speed and she could be rated. She was a very nice filly to work with. Real good around the barn”
A second-place finish in the G1 Personal Ensign at Saratoga would prove to be her final race. An exam revealed potential problems in her legs and the decision was made to retire her. Even off the track she was making money for her connections. She sold at the November Fasig-Tipton sale for a record, $9.5 million.
Songbird finished her career with a stellar record, 15-races, 13 wins and two seconds with earnings of $4,692,000. Nine of those victories were Grade I’s. She won two Eclipse Awards for top 2-year-old filly and top 3-year-old filly.
“She was extremely smart,” Smith remembered. “A filly you really loved being around. So kind and lovable. As well as a fierce competitor; she could just melt in your arms”
Now she’s making babies. Her first foal was a filly by Arrogate in 2019 and in March of 2021 she delivered another filly, this one by Tapit.
California Chrome is making babies, too, over in Japan. His sale to Japanese interests disappointed a lot ‘Chromies’ in America but they still have the memories of him while he raced in the U.S. The big chestnut horse with the giant blaze became America’s horse in 2014 when he swept through the California prep races and went on to win the Kentucky Derby.
“As a young horse he always showed talent,” trainer Art Sherman says. “He matured as a 3-year old and really got good. He stretched out and the blinkers helped him a lot, got him more focused. He laid the body down every time he ran. He was a once-in-a-lifetime horse for me.”
California Chrome would win six consecutive races, including the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, before missing out on the elusive crown and losing in the G1 Belmont Stakes, a race more remembered for his owner’s rant on national television following the race.
His story is one of small-time owners, with small pocketbooks, hitting it big.
“I never had the clients who could afford to buy what they pay these days,” Sherman says. “You look at what’s happening in racing, every horse is going for a million-two, 800, 900 thousand. This was a ham and egger story. It was like hitting the jackpot, like playing the lotto. We had a 12-hundred dollar stud. It was really good for racing. That’s why I think everybody loves the horse.”
“I think California Chrome did a lot for racing,” jockey Victor Espinoza says. “He’s the only horse I ever rode who brought many, many people together and I think it’s awesome he’s going in the Hall of Fame. Well deserved.”
It started at Hollywood Park in 2013 where he broke his maiden as a 2-year-old. He came to Del Mar and won the Graduation Stakes, but then finished sixth in the G1 Del Mar Futurity and ran another sixth in a stakes race at Santa Anita.
But then the son of Lucky Pulpit scored in the King Glorious and the winning streak was on. For six months California Chrome couldn’t lose
“He was nice to train,” Sherman says. “Once he got to the paddock he was focused. A little studdish at times, like at the Derby and the Preakness, but as he got older he was okay.”
“Every horse is unique in their own way,” Espinoza says. “I always have different experiences with different horses and California Chrome was a very flashy horse. He got excited and happy (on race day) so for me it was more fun than being nervous.”
Following the defeat in the Belmont Stakes California Chrome finished sixth in the G1 Pennsylvania Derby and then suffered a heartbreaking defeat in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, finishing third in a blanket finish with Bayern and Toast of New York.
California Chrome © Benoit Photo
He returned to Del Mar that fall, switched surfaces and won the G1 Hollywood Derby on the grass, clinching Horse of the Year honors. It would turn out to be Sherman’s second favorite race with California Chrome.
“Another good race,” Sherman says. “Gave him the Eclipse and best 3-year old.”
The following year the connections took him overseas to the Middle East where he ran second to Prince Bishop in the Dubai World Cup. That’s when things momentarily went off the rails. Owners Perry Martin and Steve Coburn turned California Chrome over to Newmarket-based trainer Rae Guest, to prep the colt for a run at Royal Ascot. He never made the race. Instead he was scratched days before with a bruised hoof.
He returned to the U.S with the Arlington Million in mind, but was diagnosed with bruising of the cannon bones and was shelved for the rest of the year.
California Chrome returned to Art Sherman’s barn in 2016 and flourished, reeling off another six-race win streak that included victories in the Dubai World Cup, the G2 San Diego at Del Mar and the G1 Pacific Classic. Despite running in a Kentucky Derby, two Breeders’ Cup Classics and two Dubai World Cups, the Pacific Classic win is Sherman’s all-time favorite with ‘Chrome.’
“We live in San Diego and I’ve always loved that race,” Sherman says. “We got to run against Beholder, who was the queen. It was quite an experience to be in the paddock that morning. Beholder was schooling and I was schooling at the other end. I had to keep them apart because he was still a stud horse and I couldn’t let them get too close. But it was cool, Richard (Mandella, Beholder’s trainer) was really super about it.”
“The Pacific Classic is the best memory I have,” Espinoza says. “It was so much fun to prepare him to run, the scene in the paddock, it’s just good memories.”
California Chrome would just miss again in the Breeders’ Cup Classic when he was rundown by fellow Hall of Fame inductee Arrogate. But the setback was not enough to sway voters who awarded ‘Chrome’ his second Horse of the Year honor.
He would race just once in 2017, a ninth-place finish in the Pegasus World Cup and he was soon retired. After success in the breeding shed here in the United States as well as shuttling down to Chile in the summer, California Chrome was sold to Japanese interests in November of 2019.
“The fellow that’s in charge of the branch over there keeps asking me if I’m ever going to come back,” Sherman says of going to Japan and visiting his old friend. “I had such a bad year this past year with my health, I had a couple of surgeries for kidney stones and I just wasn’t myself. I’m feeling better now so I’m looking forward to maybe seeing him next year and I have an open invitation to come and see him.”
In the meantime, Sherman and his family are back in Saratoga Springs this week to be a part of California Chrome’s induction ceremonies. He’ll have some company with him.
“About four or five Chromies are going back (to Saratoga),” Sherman says. “He had so many followers. I still have people texting me and saying how much they enjoyed him.”
There’s something about watching a great racehorse in person. You can’t help but appreciate the size and stature of a well-tuned Thoroughbred and to be in the presence of these three horses, like thousands of Del Mar patrons had the pleasure of experiencing, is a memory you never forget.
“Not only are they extremely fast but they’re intelligent,” Smith says of all the great horses he’s ridden. “They gotta want to do it. They have to like their job. There’s a lot of reasons and a lot of ways. For them to go on those winning streaks is just incredible.”
“I’ve ridden so many amazing horses in my career,” Espinoza says with a grin. “I think they should all be in the Hall of Fame.”