Del Mar’s Saturday programme belonged to two horses who produced very different performances but the same result: victory. Hughes stamped himself as one of the leading young horses in the Bob Baffert stable with a commanding Best Pal Stakes win, while Warming produced a late surge to take the Yellow Ribbon Stakes for Graham Motion.
The day’s stakes action began with the Grade 3 Best Pal Stakes, a six-furlong contest for two-year-olds that often serves as an early measure of the juveniles who could make an impact later in the season.
Hughes emerged from the five-horse field with his reputation considerably enhanced.
The Baffert-trained colt was involved in the early pace before asserting control. After dealing with one rival in the opening stages, Hughes quickly put daylight between himself and the rest when the main challenge arrived, pulling away to win by 7Âľ lengths.
The performance gave jockey Juan Hernandez his fourth victory in the Best Pal Stakes and extended Baffert’s extraordinary record in the race. It was the trainer’s 12th Best Pal victory and his fifth consecutive success in the contest, following last year’s win with Desert Gate.
For Baffert, the victory also marked his first stakes success of the Del Mar summer meeting and took his all-time stakes tally at the seaside track to 191.
Hughes, a son of Into Mischief, had shown plenty of speed in his earlier work, and the Best Pal suggested that his natural ability could carry him into the bigger juvenile races later this summer.
Del Mar horse racing was given another glimpse of a potential future star as Hughes powered clear in the Best Pal Stakes.
The colt reportedly exited the race in good order, with attention now turning towards the Grade 1 Futurity on September 6. The Futurity represents the next major local test for Del Mar’s two-year-olds and could provide Hughes with an opportunity to strengthen his position among the leading juveniles of the season.
Baffert was also active at Saratoga on the same afternoon, where Explora produced a dominant five-length victory in the Grade 1 Test Stakes. The filly had previously finished second in both the Del Mar Debutante and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar.
Baffert is expected to remain in New York through the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale before returning to Southern California.
The second graded stakes of the afternoon brought together fillies and mares over a mile and one-sixteenth on turf in the Grade 2 Yellow Ribbon Stakes.
Motion, who won the race last year with Heredia, once again found the answer after sending Warming west from his Fair Hill base.
The daughter of Global Campaign was held towards the rear through the first half of the race as the field travelled at a measured tempo. Hernandez kept her settled before gradually bringing her into contention.
When asked for her effort in the stretch, Warming changed leads and accelerated sharply. She continued to build momentum through the final stages and reached the front in the closing strides, getting up just before the finish.
The victory was particularly notable because Warming already had experience at Del Mar. She had competed in the Grade 3 Bayakoa at the track last autumn and had also won at Santa Anita.
Hernandez was riding her for the second time, having previously partnered her to victory in the Grade 3 Autumn Miss Stakes. That familiarity proved valuable as Warming was able to settle despite breaking a little slowly and conserve her energy for the decisive run.
The victory was Hernandez’s fifth stakes win at Del Mar and his second of the day. He also recorded three wins on the Saturday programme, extending his advantage in the jockey standings by four victories.
Hernandez now has 70 stakes victories at Del Mar.
For Motion, the result was his 13th stakes victory at the track and his third in the past two years. He had previously won the Grade 2 John Mabee Stakes with Gimme a Nother in 2025.
Warming came out of the race in good order and is scheduled to return to Fair Hill on Tuesday. Her autumn programme will be mapped out once she is back in Maryland.
The wider story from Saturday was the change in fortunes among the horses that had been expected to perform strongly.
The first five races on the card went to the pre-race favourite, while seven of the 10 races were eventually won by the horse that had been sent off at the top of the market.
That represented a marked change from the opening weeks of the meeting, when successful favourites had been unusually scarce.
Before the previous Sunday, only 17.53 per cent of post-time favourites had won at the meeting. The figure has since improved to 27.82 per cent going into Sunday’s programme.
Even after the recent improvement, the figure remains well below Del Mar’s usual levels.
Historical records provide some perspective. In 1955, only 83 favourites won from 329 races during a 40-day meeting, producing the track’s lowest recorded percentage at 25 per cent.
The figure was only slightly higher in 1989, when 100 favourites won from 387 races, a 26 per cent strike rate. In 2017, favourites accounted for 26.7 per cent of the winners across a 36-day, 318-race summer meeting.
The contrast with 1954 is striking. That year, 144 favourites won from 337 races, producing a record 43 per cent figure.
The unusual swing came during the era of legendary jockey Bill Shoemaker, who won 94 races at the meeting in 1954 before moving his base east the following year.
More recently, the 42.5 per cent mark was reached at both the 2023 autumn meeting and last year’s summer session, although neither figure surpassed the historic record.
The current season has therefore been an unusual one by Del Mar standards, although the recent improvement suggests the final figure could move considerably higher before the meeting closes.
The stakes programme at Del Mar continues with three more major contests next weekend, providing another important weekend of racing before the Pacific Classic programme arrives.
Saturday’s schedule features the $150,000 Solana Beach Stakes for California-bred fillies and mares over one mile on the Jimmy Durante turf course.
Grand Slam Smile, who won the race last year, is among the nominations. The California-bred champion at two and three is joined on the list by Can’t Sleep, who finished second in the Daisycutter Handicap last month, and Take Another Card, runner-up to Grand Slam Smile in the Fran’s Valentine Stakes at Santa Anita in May.
The same Saturday programme also includes the 29th running of the $100,000 CTT and TOC Stakes, a demanding mile-and-three-eighths turf contest for fillies and mares.
Sixteen horses have been nominated for the race, which traditionally serves as an important local preparation for the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap later in August.
The three leading finishers from the Possibly Perfect Stakes at Santa Anita in June — Kentucky Gal, Innovative and The Mizzen Queen — are all among the nominations after finishing within a nose and a head of one another.
Sunday brings the Grade 3 Rancho Bernardo Stakes, where Sweet Azteca is scheduled to return in defence of her title.
The six-year-old daughter of Sharp Azteca has won the previous two editions of the six-furlong race, both by decisive margins. Trainer Richard Baltas has bigger autumn ambitions for the mare, with the Rancho Bernardo expected to form part of her preparation for the major races later in the year.
Nine fillies and mares have been nominated, including Magnificat, who most recently finished second to Sweet Azteca in the Grade 2 Great Lady M Stakes at Los Alamitos.
Saturday’s stakes fields are due to be drawn on Monday, with the Rancho Bernardo field scheduled to be finalised on Wednesday.
Last year’s Del Mar Futurity winner Brant has been retired from racing and is scheduled to begin his next career at stud in 2027.
The three-year-old son of Gun Runner attracted considerable attention from the beginning of his career. He was purchased for $3 million as a two-year-old before making an immediate impression with a winning debut at Del Mar in July 2025.
That first performance produced a 101 Beyer Speed Figure, and he followed it with victory in the Del Mar Futurity, defeating stablemate Desert Gate.
Brant later finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile behind Ted Noffey and Mr. A.P.
His three-year-old campaign was less successful. He finished fifth in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes, his only start on the Kentucky Derby trail, before placing fourth in the Grade 3 Maxfield Stakes at Churchill Downs in June.
Brant retires with $424,400 in career earnings and will stand at Hill ’n’ Dale in Xalapa from 2027.
Del Mar race caller Larry Collmus found himself in an unusual position last Sunday when a horse carrying his own name appeared in one of the races he was calling.
Collmus, a five-year-old son of Gun Runner, made his racing debut in a five-horse maiden contest and finished fourth.
The horse was named after the veteran announcer following an arrangement involving owner Amr Zedan and trainer Bob Baffert. Zedan had previously named a horse after Santa Anita announcer Frank Mirahmadi and subsequently offered Collmus the opportunity to choose another horse from Baffert’s stable.
The horse had endured a series of injuries before finally making it to the races.
For Collmus, the moment added another unusual memory to a career that has taken him to some of the sport’s biggest stages.
He is now in his third summer calling races at Del Mar. His first came during the COVID-affected season when Trevor Denman remained in Minnesota. Collmus later returned to the track and has continued to call the meeting each year.
Away from Del Mar, his broadcasting responsibilities include the Kentucky Derby, the remaining Triple Crown races and the Breeders’ Cup.
Among the defining moments of his career was American Pharoah’s 2015 Triple Crown victory, a landmark achievement that ended a 37-year wait.
Collmus has described race calling as a constant test of concentration and memory. Preparation begins well before the horses reach the track, with silks marked on his programme, past performances studied and running styles assessed.
A typical weekday card requires roughly an hour of preparation, while a weekend programme can take considerably longer.
The challenge is not only remembering the horses in the upcoming race but clearing them from his mind once the contest is over. Similar silks or names in consecutive races can create problems if the previous field remains too fresh in the announcer’s memory.
Collmus also gives racing fans an opportunity to see the work behind the calls from the Del Mar grandstand booth, with proceeds from those experiences supporting CARMA, the California Retirement Management Account, which assists retired racehorses.
For a sport built around moments that disappear almost as quickly as they arrive, the race caller’s job remains one of its most demanding crafts.
Saturday’s programme underlined that point once again. Hughes announced himself as a juvenile worth following, Warming showed the value of patience on turf, and the wider Del Mar meeting continued to produce storylines well beyond the headline races.
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