Del Mar’s Bing Crosby Season Opens with Spotlight on Breeders’ Cup Championships

Del Mar’s 11th fall run begins Thursday with a very special event highlighting a busy opening weekend.

The 16 racing programs held over five weeks will include the Breeders’ Cup World Championships Friday and Saturday offering more than $34 million in purses and awards for 14 races.

Five of those tests will be run Friday with nine more – including America’s richest race, the $7-million Breeders’ Cup Classic – on Saturday. First posts are11:35 a.m. Friday and 10:05 a.m. Saturday.

Overall, the “Bing Crosby Season,” which honors the Hollywood icon who founded the track, will include 20 stakes races during the five-week stand, including six run in conjunction with the Breeders’ Cup cards.

The slate on both Thursday and Sunday features nine races; the Let It Ride Stakes, for 3-year-olds, with a $100,000 purse, is Thursday.

Del Mar’s stakes offerings include a pair of $300,000, Grade I features on closing weekend – the Hollywood Derby for 3-year-olds at nine furlongs on turf on Nov. 30, and the Matriarch Stakes for fillies and mares at a mile on the lawn Dec. 1.

The pair of Grade I’s are part of the track’s Turf Festival, eight grass stakes in all during the closing two weeks of the session, which are likely to lure some of the best turf runners from across the country.

The Breeders’ Cup falling during the Bing Crosby Season, said Del Mar vice president and racing secretary David Jerkens, “just makes a good thing even better.”

“Our regular fall cards – enhanced by our special Turf Festival – will present some of the best racing in the country during that time period and, with Breeders’ Cup coming back again in 2025, we’ll hope to keep our racing roll moving right ahead,” he added.

After opening weekend Del Mar will present its regular cards – some stakes races honor other Hollywood icons, such as Cary Grant, Betty Grable and Cecil B. DeMille – with full slates on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the next four weeks.

First post on all racing days will be 12:30 p.m. with eight-race cards on all weekdays and nine-race programs on all weekends.