Race tracks are exciting. The beautiful horses, the jockeys in their bright silks, the people with their bright hopes. But there were two other factors that drew me to the Santa Anita race track.

Factor No. 1:

I was a little girl when a little brown horse from California became the most famous race horse in America. It seemed that his name and photograph were known to every man, woman and child in the country.

He was Seabiscuit, a great-great grandson of Hastings, the meanest race horse in history, and the son of Hard Tack, who had inherited all of Hastings' rambunctious genes. Seabiscuit didn't look like a race horse - knobby of knee, stubby of build, awkward of gait. He shouldn't have won races. But he did.

"What did he have going for him?" you might ask.

He had heart. And the devotion of an anti-social trainer, a failed boxer-turned-jockey, and a bicycle-repairman-turned-auto-salesman who saw the latent talent in horse and trainer and jockey. It's a gripping story, told most recently in the 2001 book "Seabiscuit," by Laura Hillenbrand, and in the 2003 re-make of the 1949 movie "Seabiscuit."

When Seabiscuit was running in the Santa Anita Handicap in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had his secretary freeze all his appointments, and sat glued to the radio - he and most of the rest of the country. Seabiscuit won.

He also won when the racing world demanded a match between him and War Admiral, who was the East Coast's supposedly unbeatable champion. The Biscuit was an underdog at a time when Depression Americans felt like underdogs, too; and his successes became their successes. He got more newspaper space in 1938 than Roosevelt. Hitler came in third.

For me, Seabiscuit's fabulous career was secondary to the fact that my cousin Dick Richards, two years my senior, had named his pony Seabiscuit, and let me ride him. I never got over it. Although Dick's Seabiscuit ignored my commands and rubbed my bare legs against every rough tree and fence post he could find, I adored him and all horses since.

When I came to California, I discovered that the Santa Anita race track had a statue of Seabiscuit and of George Woolf, the incredible jockey who rode Azucar to victory in the inaugural Santa Anita Handicap in 1935! The George Woolf who rode Seabiscuit when Red Pollard, the horse's beloved jockey, was injured!

Getting to Santa Anita became a burning desire. Learning that a scene from the movie "Seabiscuit" had been filmed at our own La Purisima Mission added fuel to the fire.

Factor No. 2:

George Yoshitake's story. George and his wife, June, live in Vandenberg Village. When George was 12 years old, he lived in a horse stall at the Santa Anita race track for six months with his mother, father and three siblings.

Yoshitake is a Japanese surname, and in 1942, if you lived on the West Coast and had a Japanese surname, you were considered a first-class security risk. You and your family were sent to an internment camp.

The round-up of Japanese families was sudden and it was non-negotiable. George and his family were bused from East Los Angeles to Santa Anita until they could be relocated in the more permanent camp in Rohwer, Ark.

George remembers the cramped conditions with six people in that horse stall. Because of wartime conditions, the horses had been removed. He remembers the tents in the infield where other families lived, the barbed wire all around the race track area, the guards in army uniforms up in the guard towers, and the searchlights that played over the area all night, every night. He remembers taking showers in the area where the horses were washed. He remembers the old women sitting in the grandstand, weaving strips of burlap into netting to make camouflages for the war effort.

George mused: "There those women were, interned by the U.S. government, helping the U.S. war effort."

One day recently, Jill Schaefer, Mary Kay Degenhart - intrepid adventurers - and I walked onto the grounds of Santa Anita Park in Arcadia and found ourselves gazing at the bronze statue of the little brown horse, the Biscuit himself. He stands before the entrance to the grandstand in a small oval track where horses and riders parade for the public before they go through a tunnel onto the main track. He is small, as horses go, but even in bronze he exudes an endearing self-assurance.

Nearby was George Woolf, caught by the sculptor in the cocky pose that characterized him, with his trademark kangaroo leather saddle over his arm.

Thus, factor No. 1's itch was scratched. Then, unexpectedly, Bob Lovka, a handicapper at Santa Anita for 15 years, revealed the presence of another gem: a bronze plaque commemorating the internment of the Japanese in 1942, confirming George's story. People unfamiliar with this sad bit of history must find it a startling contrast to the color and pageantry around them as they stand reading the plaque.

From there the intrepid adventurers went to the grandstand to get ready for Race One. Most people walked through the grandstand lobby to the bleachers. Mary Kay was escorted through the horses' tunnel.

Jill got her betting out of the way immediately. She went to the row of betting windows and plunked down $2 on each of the eight races. How did she choose her horses? Any use of her maiden name, "Martin," by horse, owner, jockey or stable got her money. It was as good a method as any. I went with my stomach. Saint Chocolate got my $2.

A bugler strutted onto the track, raised his long silver trumpet bugle, sounded the familiar starting call, and they were off!

I left my seat and hung over the fence. The starting gates were on the far track beyond the first turn. We heard the gates slam open. Tiny horses with tiny riders crouching over their necks streaked down the far side. Instants later, they rounded the final turn. The figures got larger and larger. The crowd noise swelled into hysteria. The pack zipped across the finish line.

"Who won?" No one knew. Finally the results came up on a huge electronic scoreboard. "Winner: Number 4."

Karen Romandia from Orange County, standing beside me, yelled, "Oh, nuts!" tore up her betting ticket and threw the pieces in the air. She had bet on No. 3.

An announcement came over the PA system.

"No. 4 has been disqualified. The winner is No. 3."

Karen dropped to the ground, frantically gathering up bits of paper. She raced in to the betting windows and presented the handful to an agent. She returned, clutching - would you believe it? - her winnings.

From wild anticipation to defeat to frantic hope to triumph. Just another day at the races.