Ron Glatt returns to winner's circle with 61-1 Santa Anita upset
Ron Glatt snapped a 25-year gap between starters with a $61.20 upset at Santa Anita, winning as both trainer and owner with Smile Baby Smile.
More than a quarter-century after his previous starter, Ron Glatt was back in the Santa Anita winner’s circle with the kind of longshot that horse racing lives on. Glatt, 80, won the third race on May 30 with Smile Baby Smile, a 5-year-old mare he owns and trains, when the 61-1 shot got up by a neck in a 6-furlong allowance optional claiming race for California-bred or California-sired fillies and mares.
Smile Baby Smile covered the dirt in 1:10.89 over a fast track and paid $61.20 to win, $21.60 to place and $6.60 to show. Abel Lezcano rode the mare with a rail-skimming trip, and the exacta returned $131.50, the trifecta $510.80 and the superfecta $120.07 in a race with a $67,000 purse.
The victory carried a weight that went far beyond the tote board. Glatt’s previous start as a trainer came on Sept. 10, 2000, and he had spent roughly 25 years retired from training before this return. He last claimed Smile Baby Smile for $8,000 last June, saw the daughter of Smiling Tiger struggle in an earlier start this month, then gave her time off and came back with a horse he believed still had something left.
That patience paid off in a race that fit the profile of a classic horseman’s score. Smile Baby Smile, a Kentucky-bred chestnut mare foaled April 10, 2021, is out of Pearls for Girls by Greeley’s Galaxy. She improved her record to 4 wins from 19 starts, with 4 seconds and 1 third, and lifted her lifetime earnings to $96,180. She had earned just $1,340 in 2026 before the upset.
Glatt’s return also resonated because of who he is in Southern California racing. He won 676 races in a career that began in 1976 and became especially successful at Emerald Downs after that track opened in 1996. He remains active around horses, helping with foundation work on the farm and around his son Mark Glatt’s stable, which made the moment feel less like a comeback and more like a family milestone.
The race came on a Santa Anita card marked as an employee appreciation day and birthday-themed program, a fitting backdrop for a result that turned a modest claim into a feel-good local story. With a top California trainer’s father still able to outlast time, form and odds, Glatt’s win was a reminder that racing’s best stories are often the ones that take decades to arrive.
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