He Looks Under the Surface : Horse racing: As Santa Anita’s new track superintendent, Wood has made improvements for today’s opener.

When Steve Wood was growing up in West Covina, he aspired to becoming a jockey at Santa Anita. That goal all but disappeared by the time Wood was 12, for he already weighed 115 pounds.

Wood, who is now 40, and weighs about 180, has made it to Santa Anita anyhow but instead of riding horses in Arcadia, he is caring for the track over which they run. Wood was hired as Santa Anita’s track superintendent about a month ago.

It’s a post that will put Wood in a goldfish bowl as Santa Anita opens its 54th season today. The Oak Tree meeting that ended on Nov. 5 was not kind to the horses, resulting in much criticism from owners and trainers about the racing surfaces.

“Every track superintendent is on the spot,” Wood said. “The whole industry has focused on the safety of horses.”

The son of a retired surgeon whose patients included horsemen now running at Santa Anita, Wood has been working around tracks in California, Idaho, Oregon, New Mexico and even South America for almost 20 years. He is personally affected when a horse breaks down on one of his surfaces and has to be destroyed.

“It leaves a mark on you,” he said. “I can remember the place where every horse breaks down during the course of a meet. And when a horse gets hurt and has to be put down, it’s like watching one of your kids drown and being a mile away when it happens.”

Despite a weight problem, the 5-foot-9 Wood managed to begin a riding career while he was still in high school. “I rode in the Big Apple,” he said. “You know, places like Prescott and Flagstaff (Ariz.) and Ferndale. The circuit where the overweight jocks go to ride. I won eight or 10 races over parts of four years.”

One of Wood’s riding contemporaries was Gary Brinson, now the official starter at Hollywood Park.

His career as a jockey over, Wood galloped horses and broke young horses at the Pomona fairgrounds and at California farms. In 1972, he was hired as a track maintenance assistant at Pomona.

“I worked under Dub Houck, who was the Pomona superintendent for 25 years,” Wood said. “There are no books, there’s no school to go to where you can learn this job, so Dub taught me everything he knew, and he was as good as there was at this business. They only had a two-man crew there, and we worked seven days a week together. He was like my second father.”

In 1979, Houck retired and Wood replaced him. Wood continues to work at Pomona, which is now known as Fairplex Park, and last year he was hired by Del Mar, which recently signed him to a three-year contract.

“Every track has a different material, so you just try to adjust,” Wood said. “Tracks get too hard, too soft. They’re wet enough, they’re not resilient.”

And Santa Anita?

“We’ve added some materials (to the main track) to make it like it was eight or 10 years ago,” Wood said. “We’ve put some bark into it, which ought to make it more resilient, and give it more life. Golden Gate, Los Alamitos and Pomona have done the same thing in recent years. I also plan to dig up about six inches of the track a couple of times a week.”

Eddie Gregson is a Santa Anita trainer who’s been critical of the track surfaces. “I like Steve Wood and I think he’s off to a good start,” Gregson said. “It rains in the winter, I know, but there are still many more fast tracks than muddy ones, and recently they kept pouring more sand on the surface. That just made the track drier and drier. Santa Anita’s had some good track men before, but things they wanted to do sometimes didn’t coincide with management’s philosophy. If they give Wood a chance, I think he’ll do a good job.”

Horses run fast at Santa Anita. Some say that they run too fast.

“The only thing that matters is safety,” Wood said. “I want to make sure that as many of them as possible go home under their own power. If a track is finely tuned, the good horses will run faster just naturally.”

Wood has an ownership interest in about 15 horses. “Most of them don’t amount to much,” he said. “But I do have a piece of Serious Toy, a 2-year-old filly who might turn out to be something.”

Today’s opening feature is the $100,000 Malibu, one of the stepping stones toward the Charles H. Strub Stakes for 4-year-olds Feb. 10. The other leg is the San Fernando Jan. 19. Only five horses have swept the series, the last being Precisionist in 1985.

There are 12 horses entered in the seven-furlong Malibu, including several who were waylaid before or during this year’s Triple Crown series. They include Magical Mile, the Hollywood Juvenile winner who hasn’t run in nine months; Pleasant Tap, winless in 11 months but third in the Kentucky Derby; and Burnt Hills, who may be returning to form after running next to last in the Derby.

Horse Racing Notes

Santa Anita, normally open Wednesday through Sunday, has an unusual schedule through the holidays. There will be no racing Thursday or on Wednesday, Jan. 2. The track is running next Monday and Tuesday. . . . The 88- day season runs through April 22. There will be stakes races on the first six days. Post time today is noon. Then the first race will be at 12:30 through Feb. 20, and after that 1 p.m.

Laffit Pincay Jr., who has won the Malibu the last two years, will be on Magical Mile today. . . . Malibu starters Restless Con and Profit Key are both trained by Wayne Lukas, who won last year’s trainer title when he saddled 38 winners. . . . Starting in 1986, Gary Stevens and Pincay have won the jockey title in alternate years. Stevens won 111 races last season and leads the country in purses this year with $13.5 million. . . . Mike Manning has been promoted to assistant general manager at Santa Anita.