And away they go...

The professor grew up in a family where gambling was a part of life.*  His family got together to play cards.  They lived in the San Francisco area so they enjoyed going to Reno to gamble in the casinos.  At one time, the professor's father was joint owner of a race horse.**  Needless to say, the Professor was exposed to gambling and particularly horse racing when he was very young.  His first experiences of going to the races were watching horses run at the county fairs in the summer time.  He learned to read the Racing Form and to handicap the horses.  

When we first started coming to San Diego on a regular basis, we rented a house in Solana Beach.  It was about a ten to fifteen minute walk with the Professor's long legs to the race track in Del Mar.  A lot of our children have been to the races at one time or another.  I went with him when we were first married and fortunately took a book to read.  Races have about a half hour between each running.  Lots of time for the handicapper to think and for me to read a novel.  

The Del Mar season starts in mid July and twice during the time the horses race here, the organizers have what they call "Donuts Day."  It is a Saturday morning when all of the family is invited to come to the track and watch horses exercise while they eat donuts and drink orange juice or coffee.  One of the highlights for many racing fans is the opportunity to see and hear Trevor.

Trevor Denman is one of the most popular voices in horse racing.  Our entire family has got to know him as if he was a family friend because he has announced at the Del Mar race track for so many years.  In fact this year he has been announcing in the US for 30 years, 29 of those here in the San Diego area.  He is originally from South Africa so has a very distinctive accent and a great deal of charm. 

Unfortunately none of my efforts to take a picture of him worked this year.  The venue for his question and answer session was just inside a huge canopy with the daylight behind him..  My modest camera could not catch more than dark images even with the correct lighting setting.  

He is best known for the phrase "And away they go...", spoken as the horses emerge from the starting gate.^[2] Some other phrases that Denman has coined are popular with racing fans, such as "scraping the paint", used to describe a horse who is saving ground (running very close to the inner rail). Another is "they would need to sprout wings to catch ______ ..." when a horse is leading by an insurmountable margin in the stretch. A similar phrase used in the same context is "he's [or she's] out here moving like a winner..." "______ looks like he jumped in at the quarter pole..." is used when a horse comes from far back and is running so fast as to give the impression that he has only just started to run. Finally, another well known Denman phrase is, "_________ is coming like an express train!" This phrase is used when a horse is running right by leading horses in the stretch.

These are a few pictures taken with some of the race horses and the lead rider who usually accompanies the high spirited race horse and his jockey to the track.

This is the paddock. Yesterday there were no horses in this area.  Usually we have seen some skittish horses here who are being taught to be calm around the public.

Despite the fact that the 1930s were plagued with the Great Depression, the city of Del Mar procured land and built a fair ground. Bing Crosby and friends raised money so that they could build a race track to accompany the fair grounds.  Crosby was the first president of the Turf Club.  Today the pavilions are named after Bing Crosby and friends some of his friends.  At the time the track was built, racing was the number two sport followed by Americans.  Baseball was number one.  Today race tracks are closing and there are less horses running in the races.  The current generation is attracted to football and basketball as sports to bet on.  Hollywood Park is closing this fall.  So far Del Mar is surviving and still the exciting spot "where the surf meets the turf."


*Notaconnoisseur (that's me - the blogger) grew up in a home with a very different view about gambling.  My father grew up in a strict religious environment where they were taught that gambling was a sin.  Therefore there were no cards in their family.  My mother grew up in a home where her father had lost all of his pay check in a card game during the depression.  My grandfather never played cards or gambled again and there were no cards in their household.  As a result we never had a deck of cards in the home where I grew up.  In fact I still cannot spot the winning hand in a card game in a movie.

**According to the Professor's older sister, the Professor's grandparents gave their mother a piece of property close to the beach in Santa Cruz.  In the 1950s the Professor's father persuaded his mother to sell the property and he bought a race horse.  As far as I know, it never won a race.  Whether it ever ran in a race, I don't know.  Hard to think about having a house close to the beach in Santa Cruz once upon a time..