Mark and Carolyn and I were at Santa Anita on February 12 and were on the track for the last race of the day – the Robert B Lewis Stakes. We weren’t paying much attention, hobnobing with jockeys and milling around with racing folk. What happened was, the race was won by the literal nag in the pack – the longest price on the board at odds of 43-1 – a fragile looking chestnut colt named  “I’ll Have Another” (hereafter referred to as “Cookies”). Cookies and his jockey, a sweet faced, 24 year old named Mario Gutierrez, startled the 30,000 fans in attendence by shaking free of the field and storming past the finish line dead first, delighting the 4 or 5 people that bet on him. Suddenly, it was exciting. We happened to be standing on the track for that race, watching Cookies and Mario and Team O’Neil make their triumphant trip to the winners circle. The win was Cookies’ first career graded stakes win and made him a contender for the Santa Anita Derby. I wrote about Cookie’s win at The Santa Anita Derby, on April 7  (I don’t go every week, I swear), a tremendous run down the stretch, to beat odds-on, overwhelming favorite Creative Cause.  Here are some photos from February’s race day, which, in addition to Cookies big upset, involved photo ops with lots of jockeys, including Laffit Pincay. The pictures are via lousy iphone.