So Happy named Santa Anita’s top horse after Derby upset

Santa Anita closed its 2025-26 winter-spring meet with the kind of finishing act that usually defines a season: a Derby upset on the colt side and a sharp, last-to-first graded stakes win on the filly side. So Happy was named the meet’s top horse and Om N Joy was honored for the top achievement, and together they told the story of a meet that kept producing races people actually remembered.

The six-month stand ended June 15 with Santa Anita’s first Monday closing program in its 91-year history, after an opening day that was delayed 48 hours. The track said the season drew strong crowds and wagering, highlighted by more than $18.2 million in opening-day handle and the sixth straight winter-spring meet in which daily handle topped $9 million. Live racing returns Sept. 25 for the Autumn Meet, while the stable area stays open for training until mid-July before annual summer maintenance.

So Happy’s case was built on more than one big afternoon, but the GI Santa Anita Derby was the race that made the meet. The Runhappy colt, trained by Mark Glatt, had already won his debut at Del Mar and added the GII San Vicente Stakes by two lengths before stretching out to 1 1/8 miles and winning the Santa Anita Derby by 2 3/4 lengths in 1:49.01. That performance gave him 100 Kentucky Derby qualifying points, a first Santa Anita Derby victory for Glatt and a sixth in the race for Mike Smith, who has now won it five times since 2018.

The numbers say So Happy was more than a one-race flash. Equibase listed him with 5 starts, 3 wins, 1 third and $480,000 in earnings as of June 14, and his 2026 line showed 4 starts, 2 wins, 1 third and $444,000. He is by Runhappy out of So Cunning, by Blame, and the Santa Anita Derby mattered because it answered the one lingering question around him: whether a colt bred for speed could carry it over a classic route. He did that, then went on to finish ninth in the Kentucky Derby after pressing a fast pace.

Om N Joy gave the meet its other signature memory with a very different kind of statement. The California-bred by Om turned a quick turnaround into a Grade II, $200,000 Santa Margarita Stakes victory on May 30, reeling in the field from last to first and winning by 3 3/4 lengths in 1:50.03 over Seismic Beauty and Simply Joking. Aggie Ordonez sent her back just seven days after a turf stakes try, and the result became her second graded stakes win. The Santa Margarita is no soft target, with Lady’s Secret’s 1:47.00 still the benchmark since 1976 and Paradise Woods’ 10 1/2-length blowout the race’s biggest margin, but Om N Joy handled the setup and stamped the meet with another race that felt bigger than the page on which it was run.