(Edited Del Mar Thoroughbred Club report)

DEL MAR, Calif. – Del Mar tucked in another season — its 71st — Wednesday on a positive note and with high hopes for better days ahead for the people and horses that make it one of America’s foremost racing centers. Track officials pointed to an increase in attendance at the 37-day stand, an increase in per-race betting, a retroactive purse payment and a series of “big” days that showed that the sport and the Del Mar “scene” are still powerful drawing cards both locally and nationally.

The turnstile count at the seven-week session tallied up at 662,521 vs. last year’s 635,679, meaning a daily average of 17,906 in 2010 against 2009’s 17,181 — a difference of 725 more fans per day, an increase of 4.2 percent. It made Del Mar the only track in California and one of a handful around the country to show a meaningful increase at the gate.

Rosario Crowned Riding King With Win in Final Race; O’Neill Picks Up Third Win in Five Seasons

In a blazing finish, both to the final day and the final race, Joel Rosario won one of the most dramatic and exciting jockey races in years at Del Mar. A victory in the final race of the final day gave him the riding crown 57-56 over Rafael Bejarano. Rosario came from last to first on Tiz Argent to edge out Patrick Valenzuela and Bejarano at the wire.

Rosario and Bejarano engaged in a seesaw battle throughout most of the season, as well as on the last day where four victories for Rosario eked out the victory. The day opened with Rosario winning the first two races and Bejarano countering by winning the next two. A third win for Rosario tied it up again and set things in motion for the dramatic finish.

After a bit of a slow start, trainer Doug O’Neill took command of the trainer race on the season’s fourth day and never looked back. O’Neill won 31 races to defeat the former two-time champ John Sadler, who won 22 races.

In the past decade — starting with a daily average attendance of 14,252 in the year 2000 and ending with this season’s 17,906 — Del Mar can proudly point to an attendance rise of more than 25 percent.

The seaside oval also could point to positives in its primary wagering growth area — Advanced Deposit Wagering — as well as the fact it was able to match last season’s per-race betting average, despite running fewer races.

Further, 2010 boasted a series of exceptional afternoons — several of them jumping into Del Mar’s Top 10 All-Time list led by another Opening Day extravaganza of 45,309 — demonstrating that the mix of good racing and good marketing is most certainly a sell to the sporting crowd in San Diego, which is among the nation’s most varied and challenging with its dozens of options to choose from among its scenic summer surroundings. Especially encouraging to both racing enthusiasts and sports fans was the spirited gathering of 32,536 that turned out on August 7 to cheer on the champion mare Zenyatta as she captured her third straight Clemente L. Hirsch Stakes and ran her perfect record to 18 for 18.

“When you look around at the challenges that seem pervasive in our industry, and then you see the sort of response we’ve gotten at our meet from our horsemen and our fans, you just know there’s much we’ve got to be grateful for,” said Del Mar’s president and general manager, Craig Fravel.

In a shift of attitude that has taken hold in the Thoroughbred industry, Del Mar once again raced an abbreviated schedule of five days per week — Wednesdays through Sundays — as opposed to its previous six-day regimen that had been in place from 1945 up until last season.

“Five days a week at Del Mar is here to stay,” said DMTC’s chief executive officer, Joe Harper, who helped lead the shift at Del Mar last year to a less-is-more scenario that proved highly successful and encouraged other similar changes throughout the sport. “This is the second year in a row that we’ve shown that format is a winner with everyone — our horsemen, our fans and our staff.”

A key element in the tightening of the racing schedule has been the drop in the number of horses available in California needed to fill cards on a regular basis. Though that situation has continued to decline on overall numbers, Del Mar was able to hold its own by adjusting its racing cards further — the track ran 19 fewer races this summer, primarily on its weekday programs — and in the process was able to post a California high in the important horses-per-race category at 8.2 runners per race as opposed to last year’s 8.5.

“I had some concerns about field size given our circumstances this summer,” said Del Mar’s executive vice president for racing and industry relations, Tom Robbins, “but our horsemen responded well.”

And though final numbers were still being calculated, it appeared all but certain that the track would offer a significant retroactive purse distribution to its horsemen, perhaps as much as $500,000. Those additional purse monies were tied directly to improved betting on a per-race basis throughout the meet.

Robbins also had to deal with a situation where some horsemen chose to keep both their stock and their help in Los Angeles in order to save on expenses, rather than shipping the 100 miles south to Del Mar. He felt it might be tougher to fill races without horses immediately on the grounds, but those fears were allayed by a steady response from horsemen that actually grew stronger as the meet went along.

Additionally, Del Mar had encouraging news on the safety front with catastrophic horse losses down nearly 50% from the 2009 season and down more than 60 percent from 2006, the last year for Del Mar’s traditional dirt surface. Last summer the track lost 13 runners to major injuries, 12 of them on its main surface. This summer the total losses were cut to seven runners, with only five of them happening on Polytrack. Officials agreed that a key element in the change was the hiring of the well-respected track superintendent Richard Tedesco, who took over the surface full time shortly before the start of the meeting and by the end of the season had the track playing among the safest and most consistent in the country.

The track’s overall daily average handle — when all sources are considered — came in at $12,154,359, a decline of 6.8 percent from last year’s daily average of $13,039,998. Total handle for the 37 days registered at $449,711,296, as opposed to $482,479,925 in 2009. The 19 fewer races — 5.5 percent below last year — played strongly in determining both those final figures.