ARCADIA (CNS) – Santa Anita Park will begin its 90th anniversary season Thursday with 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan running in the $300,000 Grade One Malibu Stakes, one of six graded stakes races on the 11-race card.
Mystik Dan is the 5-2 morning line favorite in the field of eight in the seven-furlong race for 3-year-olds on the south track. The race will be Mystik Dan’s first since finishing eighth in the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel of thoroughbred racing’s triple crown, June 8.
Mystik Dan won the Kentucky Derby by a nose over Sierra Leone as an 18- 1 shot, then finished second in the Preakness Stakes, 2 1/4 lengths behind Seize the Grey.
Mystik Dan will be the first reigning Kentucky Derby winner to race at the subsequent Santa Anita winter-spring meet since California Chrome in 2015.
The Malibu Stakes will be run as the eighth race with an approximate post time of 2:36 p.m.
The card also includes two other Grade 1 $300,000 stakes races — the La Brea Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at seven furlongs and the American Oaks for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/4 miles on turf.
There will also be three $200,000 Grade 2 stakes races — the Laffit Pincay Jr. Stakes for 3-year-olds and up at 1 1/16 miles; the San Gabriel Stakes for 3-year-olds and up at a 1 1/8 miles on turf; and the Mathis Mile Stakes for 3-year-olds on turf.
Fans with paid admission will receive a wall calendar featuring the 13 greatest moments in Santa Anita history while supplies last.
The first 1,200 fans will get a free Pincay print which the Hall of Fame jockey will autograph from 10:30-11:45 a.m. at the Kingsbury Fountain. Fans are encouraged (but not required) to make a donation to the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund.
Pincay won a then-world record 9,530 races during a career that spanned from 1966 to 2003 and is now third on the all-time list behind Jorge Ricardo, who had 13,069, and Russell Baze, who had 12,842. Pincay’s 2,860 victories are the most in Santa Anita history.
Santa Anita announced earlier this year it had renamed the San Antonio Stakes as the Laffit Pincay Jr. Stakes. Pincay will join fellow Hall of Fame jockeys Bill Shoemaker and Eddie Delahoussaye with a Santa Anita stakes race named in their honor.
“It really means a lot,” Pincay said. “I remember when Shoemaker and Delahoussaye had a stakes named for them and I thought that was very special. Now I get the chance to have one in my name.”
Pincay won the San Antonio Stakes five times. His first victory came in 1968 aboard Rising Market for trainer Ted Saladin.
“Rising Market also gave me my first victory ever at Santa Anita,” Pincay recalled. “I beat Shoemaker by a nose. I remember in the stretch I was in front, but then he went by me. I switched my stick to my left hand and he responded really well. I think that race helped me so much. From then on, I was getting on better horses.”
The first post is 11 a.m.
The card will be streamed at www.santaanita.com/racing/
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