FILLY BECOMES FIRST FATALITY OF MEET

Del Mar had its first fatality of its summer season Saturday morning when a 3-year-old filly suffered a catastrophic injury after completing a four-furlong workout.

Lovely Lilia was pulled up at the completion of the workout on the main track and vanned off. Veterinarians determined that she could not recover from the unnamed injury and was euthanized. The injury occurred shortly before 5 a.m.

Vladimir Cerin was the trainer of the Oklahoma-bred filly, who had raced seven times, winning twice. Her last race was June 12 at Santa Anita.

The track has been open for training at Del Mar for 14 days and conducted 1,124 workouts, including Lovely Lilia on Saturday. The track was hosting its second day of live racing Saturday afternoon.

Del Mar has a recent reputation of being one of the safest tracks in the United States. Last year at the summer meeting, it had no racing deaths and four in training.

Two of those in training were the result of a freak accident where two horses collided in the morning. In the shorter fall meeting, there were three racing deaths and two in training.

On Friday, the California Horse Racing Board put Los Alamitos on a 10-day probationary period to come up with a plan after a spike in deaths at the Orange County track. There have been 20 racing and training deaths at Los Alamitos since Dec. 27, including eight since May 26.

Happy birthday

Ron Mcanally, the senior trainer at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, celebrated his 88th birthday Saturday.

Mcanally marked his 61st straight season of fielding a horse at Del Mar when he sent

Red Diamond out to a fifth-place finish in Saturday’s 10th race.

Mcanally first appeared at Del Mar in 1948 as a 16-year-old working for his uncle, trainer

Reggie Cornell. Horses trained by Mcanally first raced at Del Mar in 1960.

Mcanally has trained approximately 2,700 starters at Del Mar. His career total is just under 18,000 starts with 2,587 wins and earnings just under $126 million.

Inducted into thoroughbred racing’s Hall of Fame in 1990, Mcanally’s 447 wins at Del Mar ranks him fourth in track history and his 77 stakes wins at the seaside oval rank second only to Bob Baffert (133).

Mcanally ranked as Del Mar’s all-time winningest trainer from 1998 (when he passed Farrell Jones) to 2011, when Mike Mitchell took the lead.

Mcanally earned three Eclipse Awards as the nation’s top trainer (1981, 1991 and 1992) and saddled five national champions in John Henry, Northern Spur, Bayakoa, Paseana and

Tight Spot.

John Henry was Mcanally’s biggest star — twice winning Horse of the Year honors (1981 and 1984) and winning 27 of his 45 starts for Mcanally. When John Henry retired in 1984 at the age of nine, he was the sport’s leading money winner with earnings of nearly $6.6 million.

Big payoff

When Resarcio ($16) won the 10th race on Saturday, an Oregon gambler walked away with a payoff of $288,005 as the lone holder of a ticket with all six winners in Del Mar’s Pick Six. The player, wagering on the Twinspires site’s Oregon hub, put in a $192 ticket.

Cherwa and Center are freelance writers.

Ron Mcanally