ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita’s parent company spent buckets of money on Saturday’s program to lure a younger audience to the track for a big day of racing. Turns out an older dude was one of the stars of the show. Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, 59, won two major stakes – the Grade 2, $750,000 Eddie D. Stakes on the hillside turf course on First Peace, and the Grade 1, $1 million California Crown aboard Subsanador. 1/ST Racing, the parent company of Santa Anita, boosted the purses of those races from $300,000 and $200,000 in recent years. The California Crown Stakes was previously known as the Awesome Again Stakes. This year, the California Crown was the anchor of a day that track management hopes to grow into a higher-profile event in coming years. Winning the lucrative races on the same afternoon was not lost on the veteran Smith. “It’s special, especially an inaugural day like this,” Smith said after the program. In Smith’s recent timeline, Saturday’s wins were the first time he has won two stakes on the same day since Taiba won the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby and Cairo Memories won the Grade 3 Providencia Stakes in April 2022. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. First Peace and Subsanador were Smith’s 36th and 37th wins of 2024. He won 36 races in 2023, well below his 2022 total of 63. In recent years, Smith has sought higher-profile mounts over a greater volume of rides. He had 249 mounts in 2023, and is on course to surpass that, having ridden 213 races through Saturday. At the Del Mar summer meeting, Smith had one stakes win, aboard First Peace in the restricted Wickerr Stakes, but won four stakes during that meeting at Charles Town, Fanduel Racing (outside of St. Louis), Monmouth Park and Saratoga. The win at Monmouth was aboard Subsanador in the Grade 3 Philip H. Iselin Stakes on Aug. 17. The California Crown was Subsanador’s first start since the Iselin. First Peace was racing at a shorter distance in the Eddie D. Stakes following a sixth-place finish in the Grade 2 Del Mar Mile on turf on Aug. 31. “I woke up knowing I had some great opportunities,” Smith said. “I had to go out and make the most of it and we did.” Smith gained confidence for Saturday’s races with the knowledge that First Peace and Subsanador had performed well in morning exercise in September. “They were both training this way,” he said, referring to a winning manner. “There is something to it when you have a horse doing well and training well. Nine times out of 10 they’ll run well.” First Peace is not likely to start in a Breeders’ Cup race, while Subsanador earned a fees-paid berth to the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar on Nov. 2. The Iselin and California Crown are the only races in which Smith has been aboard Subsanador, who is trained by Richard Mandella. A Group 1 winner in Argentina in 2023, Subsanador has won 9 of 17 starts. “I think he’s finally growing up,” Smith said. “Mr. Mandella has him so confident. He thinks he owns the place.” Mandella has supported Smith in recent years. In September 2023, Smith rode the Mandella-trained Tamara to a win in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante. From Mandella’s perspective, the richer the race, the more Smith’s presence is valuable. “When we get to $1 million, he loses about 10 or 20 years,” Mandella said. Smith, who won his first race at The Downs at Santa Fe in 1982, is one of the senior members of the jockey roster in Southern California. Most of his contemporaries from the 1980s, 1990s and even 2000s retired long ago. “I don’t feel like I’m getting any older,” Smith said. “I feel good. I feel I’m in great shape. I’ll keep it up and I’ll see how far it takes me.” Smith, who has ridden such equine luminaries as Holy Bull, Justify and Zenyatta in the last 30 years, has retained fitness in his late 50s with a physical regimen that includes extensive work in a local gym. For Smith, it’s a lifestyle, and a way to avoid a discouraging mindset when big-race mounts are scarce. Smith insists he turns such droughts into motivation. “I’m competitive and I tend to that do myself,” he said. “I’m probably my own worst critic, and at times I’ll do that. I go back to the gym and regroup and wait for that next good one to come along.” Subsanador may be that next good one. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.