Dennis Moore helps put Santa Anita on the right track

Santa Anita track superintendent Dennis Moore is 71. He says he wants to start slowing down, and his wife of 51 years, Chris, is constantly urging him to do so.

“But I keep telling her that’s why we’ve been married for 51 years, because I haven’t been home that much,” he joked during a 25-minute phone interview with the Southern California News Group this week. “She wouldn’t have been able to put up with me otherwise.”

Moore’s work day starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends somewhere around 6:30 p.m. That doesn’t allow for much time at home, but it does help in maintaining a safe race track as Santa Anita management has learned since Dec. 26.

Santa Anita just completed a 16-day fall meet with a big zero next to its name. Zero, as in the number of horse fatalities, either in the mornings or during afternoon racing. Coming on the heels of a disastrous 2019 winter-summer meet that saw 37 fatalities, it was a welcome relief.

And, as Moore likes to point out, there have been no fatalities on the Santa Anita main track during afternoon racing the entire year.

“I’d like to sit here and tell you that it’s all me, but it’s not,” Moore said. “There are a lot of other moving parts involved. I’ve got a great crew of guys (about 15) at Santa Anita that were sick over what happened in 2019. Especially when it seemed like they were getting the blame for it. What happened in 2019 was multi-factorial, just a lot of things came together at the wrong time.

“Belinda Stronach (chairman and president of Santa Anita’s parent company, The Stronach Group) takes a lot of hits from a lot of these people, but they oughta be on their hands and knees thanking God for Belinda Stronach. The past two years that she’s had, to keep on pouring money into the place and making the game better, you gotta applaud her and the initiative that she took to put these protocols in place. All of it works out to that’s why we are where we’re at today. Everybody working together. Everybody paying attention.”

Here are some impressive numbers: According to Santa Anita, since the horses returned from Del Mar on Sept. 5, 1,106 raced over the dirt track and turf course without a breakdown. Also, more than 51,200 horses trained over the track in the mornings, including 3,771 timed workouts over the main track and 487 over the training track, with no fatalities.

All the safety protocols Stronach put in place – drug reform, additional veterinary regulations and observations, training approvals and analysis of entries – appear to be working.

Factor in the work of Moore and his crew, and Santa Anita is in a much better place than it was a year ago in terms of safety.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Moore said. “I don’t think you can argue with the numbers. I think if all (protocols) had been done years ago, we’d be in a much healthier place today.”

Now, any number other than zero fatalities is unacceptable, but as Moore points out, that’s an unrealistic goal.

“This is a great game and great business,” he said. “Nobody, and I mean nobody in this business, wants to see a horse break down. To this day, it makes me sick to my stomach, and the trainers, the owners and management, they’re all the same way.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to happen, but we do our very best to do all that we can to make it as safe as we possibly can.”

Moore’s been at his trade since 1972. He’s been all over the world, either working on race tracks or as a consultant. He takes a lot of heat, and he doesn’t back down. Maybe it’s why the great majority of trainers consistently swear by his work.

“You can find a lot of ’em who will tell you just the opposite, too,” he joked. “So I gotta take (praise) with a grain of salt. I have about five or six of ’em (critics) wherever I go. That’s part of the game, but they worry about their horses just like I worry about the track. You listen to them and hear what they have to say. Sometimes they have some stuff that’s pretty constructive and you look at it, and if you can make an adjustment or change, you do it. But everything’s gotta be based on safety.

“If my phone’s not ringing and I’m not getting text messages, that’s a good thing. Nobody’s gonna call me and tell me how good things are.”

But they have been good all year at Santa Anita, and now it’s off to Del Mar, where Moore took over as track superintendent in 2017 after a nightmarish summer meet in 2016 and promptly righted the ship.

Moore is definitely on the right track.

Follow Art Wilson on Twitter at @Sham73