DEL MAR — Kazushi Kimura rode into Del Mar this summer with expectations high for the three-time Canadian champion jockey who’d given hints of his talent at Santa Anita earlier in the year.
“There’s a spark of brilliance there,” Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert told San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller in July.
After Saturday’s races, Kimura’s first Del Mar season can be declared a definite success.
Kimura scored victories with Tenma ($8) in the $300,000, Grade I Del Mar Debutante and Hang the Moon ($43) in the $250,000, Grade II John C. Mabee Stakes.
The first of those was Kimura’s first Grade I win at Del Mar, and the second completed what the 25-year-old from Hokkaido, Japan, said is the first Grade I-Grade II double of his career.
Both wins were upsets, Tenma beating her Baffert stablemate Nooni and Hang the Moon shocking Anisette and Didia.
“It seems like everything’s good, right?” Kimura said brightly when he was asked to sum up his Del Mar meet. “This is amazing. And tomorrow I might have a chance, too.”
On Sunday, closing day of the Del Mar meet, Kimura will be aboard contenders McKinzie Street in the $300,000, Grade I Del Mar Futurity and Sabertooth in the $100,000, Grade III Del Mar Juvenile Turf, both for trainer Tim Yakteen.
Saturday’s Kimura wins came for Baffert, giving the trainer a record 11th Del Mar Debutante, and Phil D’Amato, completing a stakes double for D’Amato after Hector Berrios rode Thought Process to a $2.80 victory in the $100,000 Del Mar Juvenile Fillies Turf.
Baffert is such an unstoppable force in the summer’s top 2-year-old races at Del Mar that he wins even when he loses.
If not for Tenma, Baffert and his backers would have remembered the Debutante for the disappointing performance by Nooni, the 4-5 favorite who faded to finish off the board after breaking stride while running in tight quarters on the turn for home.
Even without the trouble, Nooni and jockey Juan Hernandez might have struggled to win after battling with long shot Proud Starlet for the lead through early quarter-miles run in a faster-than-normal 21.50 and 44.38 seconds en route to a very average 1:23.67 for 7 furlongs.
Nooni, Proud Starlet and Night Beacon, 1-2-3 going into the far turn, ended up fifth, sixth and seventh. Tenma, Vodka With a Twist and So There She Was, fifth, fourth and sixth in mid-race, finished first, second and third.
“It wasn’t the way we were hoping it would set up,” said assistant trainer Jim Barnes, who’s in charge at Del Mar while Baffert is away at the Keeneland September yearling sale in Kentucky.
Barnes was speaking from the perspective of Nooni, the daughter of Win Win Win who had lived up to her $1.8 million price at a 2-year-old auction last spring by winning her first two starts, the debut by 9 1/2 lengths at Santa Anita and the next by 1 1/2 in the Grade III Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar.
Tenma, now 2 for 2, is expected to get better as distances increased, and that made Kimura optimistic about a future that should include the 1 1/16-mile Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar on Nov. 1.
“I think she’s going to want to run farther,” Kimura said.
The John C. Mabee was supposed to be a battle between Anisette, the best California filly on turf, a Didia, a top-quality mare from the East Coast. But neither fired her best shot, Anisette finishing third, Didia fourth.
Hang the Moon, last in the seven-horse field at one point, passed everybody in the last three-eighths a mile of the 1 1/8-mile turf race to beat Lucky Girl by a half-length.
“I think she was a little overlooked here,” D’Amato said of Hang the Moon, a 4-year-old daughter of Uncle Mo who ran second to Ag Bullet in the ungraded Osunitas Stakes last time out.
“Give a big shout out to KK (Kimura),” D’Amato added. “He got her into a big stride there, saving all the ground (along the rail) for the last quarter-mile.”
Kimura — who’s sixth in the Del Mar jockey standings with 17 wins (though his win percentage has hovered around 10%) — said he plans to go back to Woodbine, near Toronto, after Del Mar ends, and then bounce between Canada and California once the Santa Anita fall meet opens Sept. 27.
He’ll come back to California with expectations higher yet.
NOTABLE
• JuanHernandez and Baffert bring commanding leads in the Del Mar jockey and trainer standings into closing day. Hernandez has 44 wins to second-place Antonio Fresu’s 35, and Baffert has 22 to Doug O’Neill’s 18. Fresu is named on horses in 10 races, and O’Neill entered horses in seven.
• The stewards suspended jockey Kyle Frey for three days — Sept. 14, 15 and 20 — for an incident in Friday’s I’m Smokin Stakes in which Shea Brennan interfered with Style Cat. There was no disqualification because Shea Brennan finished third, behind second-place Style Cat and winner Bodacious.
• None Above the Law is one of 13 nominations for the $75,000 E.B. Johnson Stakes at Los Alamitos on Saturday, Sept. 14. The 5-year-old gelding won the Bertrando Stakes in June at Los Al, before running sixth in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. Los Al holds a thoroughbred meet Friday, Sept. 13, to Sunday, Sept. 22, with racing Friday through Sunday.