DEL MAR COMMENTARY: A toast to Benoit, horse racing lover extraordinaire

By JEFF NAHILL - Staff Writer | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 12:26 AM PDT ∞

DEL MAR ---- The Southern California horse racing community lost a great man last week when Bob Benoit died on Friday at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood at the age of 81.

Casual fans might not recognize the name, but they should.

Any track photo taken at Del Mar, Hollywood Park or Santa Anita since 1979 was shot by Benoit & Associates, but Bob Benoit's love of the sport went much deeper than that.

He was an ambassador for horse racing and Southern California racing, in particular. In 2004, Hollywood Park named him the inaugural winner of the Laffit Pincay Jr. Award given annually to a person "who has served the sport with integrity, extraordinary dedication, determination and distinction."

"I never met anyone so dedicated," said Dan Smith, Del Mar's senior media coordinator. "He was always thinking about, 'What is good for the game?' He was a guy who always asked, 'What would it take?' If it took 12 or 13 hours, that's what he would do."

Benoit convinced Smith to come into horse racing full-time after reading his freelance stories on the sport while Smith was at the Los Angeles Times as a copy boy.

"We talked for two hours one time in some parking lot about racing," Smith said. "Finally, I said yes. He was like a big brother to me. He took me under his wing, and I learned a lot."

Smith worked for Benoit at Hollywood Park, where Benoit was first in charge of publicity and ended up being general manager and chief operating officer.

Rayetta Burr met Benoit at Hollywood Park in 1973, when she was a switchboard operator. She eventually went to work for Benoit in the publicity department and later followed him to Benoit & Associates, where she became a photographer and a partner in the business along with Tom Abahazy. It was Tom's father, Tibor, whom Benoit knew at Oaklawn Park and got him involved in the track photo business.

The rest, as they say, is history.

"The e-mails are just stacking up," Burr said Monday from her office in the clubhouse. "It's just awesome. So many people are telling us, 'He was so nice to me, and I was a nobody.' Bob never thought 'nobody' ever existed.

"When he was general manager at Hollywood Park, he would sweep the plant every day. He would talk to everybody."

And to hear people reminisce about Benoit, there wasn't anyone he didn't know at any race track.

"He knew everybody ---- everybody," Smith said. "We went places, and he had friends. It was so wide. His circle of friends was coast to coast. It was west to east."

Said Burr: "When he went on solicitation trips for horses or jockeys, he went everywhere. He just wouldn't go to Nick Zito's barn. They might not have a horse this year or next year, but five years down the line, he would. He never missed a barn. Rick Shapiro of the old Western Harness e-mailed us (after Benoit's death) and he said they went on some trip to Mohawk Raceway (harness racing in Canada) and he said, 'Of course, Bob knew the announcer there.' It's just a classic line."

And Burr gives Benoit credit for her two Eclipse Awards (1983 of John Henry and 1991 of M.C. Hammer).

"He was 60 percent responsible for my two Eclipse Awards," she said. "I was about 10 percent. I just took the pictures. I would never have been around any of these circumstances if it weren't for him."

Benoit was responsible for jockeys like Eddie Delahoussaye and Sandy Hawley coming west. He started an East-West Jockey's Challenge at Hollywood Park.

"Bob would go east," Smith said, "and he would see a rider like a Delahoussaye or Hawley and he would say, 'Hey, you need to come out to the West Coast.' He was always talking up the West Coast and he was responsible for a lot of guys coming to the West Coast.

"The Jockey Challenge was a way of introducing those guys to California. The purses were good and the conditions were good. That was a big step forward for California racing when those guys came from the East Coast."

There are no services planned for Benoit. He didn't want any, and Burr thinks she knows why.

"Especially during Del Mar," she said of the six-day racing weeks, "he probably thought, 'Oh, my God, like these people don't have enough to do.' I can just hear him saying that. I really can."

Burr said there will probably be a toast to Benoit some night after the races during the Oak Tree at Santa Anita Park meet later this fall.

Everyone should raise a glass to Bob Benoit's memory. He won't be forgotten.

The Bilo saga

Trainer Mike Mitchell has turned over 8-year-old gelding Bilo to fellow trainer Marty Jones after four unsuccessful races this year.

Bilo won the Cal Cup Sprint last November and previously took the Grade I Triple Bend Handicap last July for Jones.

Purchased last winter, Bilo had been beaten by a combined 32 1/2 lengths in three races in 2008 before Sunday's eighth race, in which he was entered for a claiming price of $25,000.

About five or six jumps out of the gate, jockey Jose Valdivia Jr. pulled Bilo up and the gelding was vanned back to Mitchell's barn. There were no apparent injuries, but Mitchell decided overnight to ask the owners to give him back to Jones.

"I really thought he would win (Sunday)," Mitchell said in the clubhouse before the second race Monday . "I gave him back to Marty and I told him to train him or retire him. He just hasn't run well for me."

Mitchell said he wasn't trying to unload Bilo, who has earned $524,436 in 18 lifetime starts, but rather was hoping to get the old warrior eligible for a Cal Cup starter race in October at Santa Anita.

"Maybe he just didn't care for the synthetic track here," Mitchell said. "I didn't run him to get him claimed.

"Nothing would please me more (than) if he would win a race with Marty, but there's no pressure on Marty to run him. The owners are good people."

One of Bilo's co-owners, Scott Anastasi, didn't return a phone call Monday.

Mitchell said he wasn't sure what went wrong with Bilo, although he admitted that running him in the 1 1/8 mile Sunshine Millions Classic might have been a mistake.

"That race was so hard on him," Mitchell said. "He had a hard time coming back from that."

Maybe the old guy just has had enough racing and needs a new home or maybe he will find the fountain of youth in the Jones barn. Only time will tell.

Quite a feat

Trainer Barry Abrams would be jealous of what counterpart Linda Rice pulled off Monday at Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Abrams is known for not being afraid to run his horses often and against each other in big races. On Saturday, Abrams went 2-3 in the Grade I Del Mar Oaks, and on Sunday went 1-2 in the Solana Beach Handicap.

On Monday, Rice sent four horses out in the $83,250 Mechanicville Stakes for New York-bred thoroughbreds at 5 1/2 furlongs on the grass and they finished 1-2-3-4.

On top of that, three of the horses Rice entered were fillies running against the boys. Rice's fillies went 1-2-4.

The all-Rice exacta paid $248 for $2. The trifecta paid $914 for $2 and the superfecta paid $3,490 for $2.

Rice told reporters afterward that she doesn't bet on her horses.

"I'm superstitious," she said. "I was surprised on the price of these horses. People joked about it, and I thought it was wishful thinking to be 1-2-3-4. It sure feels good."

That's an understatement.

Contact staff writer Jeff Nahill at (760) 740-3550 or nctnahill@aol.com.