Bryce Miller: Del Mar-based Good Friends mines great luck with two horses in Breeders' Cup

One started a beach footwear company. One oversees the sales of sports drinks. One works in promotions. One is a drive-time radio host.

The Great Friends Stable, an eclectic Del Mar-based group 60 or so strong, began as a horse racing syndicate with an ulterior motive 17 years ago.

It dawned as a slick way to promote the racetrack. It grew into a rollicking track-side party. Then all these years later, something remarkable happened alongside Middle Eastern sheiks, Japanese business magnates and North American horse-racing royalty.

As the Breeders’ Cup roars to four-hooved life next Friday and Saturday, the comparatively small-peanuts group has landed in the global spotlight with not one horse, but two.

It raised a unique logistical question.

If top threat Raging Torrent wins the $2 million Sprint or longshot So There She Was scores in the $2 million Juvenile Fillies, how will everyone fit in the winner’s circle?

“We manage. We squeeze in,” said Scott La Loggia, who works at the promotions company ProForma, which produces corporate logo apparel and trade-show items. “It gets pretty cozy in there. The photographer will have to use the broad lens.”

It all started in 2007, when then-Del Mar marketing vice president Craig Dado hatched a plan to raise awareness of the track.

Dado connected with Scott Kaplan, co-host of the “Scott and B.R. Show” on the old Mighty 1090, through a mutual acquaintance. He offered to show the novice the basics, hoping that would lead Kaplan to talk more about the track on the No. 1 sports station.

“One day, I was looking into the paddock,” said Kaplan, now a drive-time host on ESPN L.A. 710. “I see (famed trainer) Bob Baffert. I’m like, ‘What is going on there exactly? That looks like a helluva lot more fun. How do we get in there?’

“Craig said, ‘Do you have any money?’ I had four kids, so I didn’t have a lot of money. But a group of guys in Rancho Santa Fe had lunch every Friday and told us about their model for something called the Del Mar Dummies.

“They had 10 guys who put in $10,000 each to get in on the action. We said, ‘Let’s do that and call it the Great Friends Stable,’ named after what we called our listeners. Corky Mizer of Corky’s Pest Control wrote the first check and we were in business.”

A long-ago lark became a magic carpet ride more than a decade and a half later.

“We never thought we’d be playing on this level, no,” Dado said. “This is way beyond our expectations. We would just go to the paddock before a race, get nervous, and hopefully end up in the winner’s circle. It really didn’t matter to us, the level.

“But this is kind of surreal.”

Del Mar’s Jeff Kelley founded a footwear company called Sanuk and helped launch Saint Archer Brewing, along with a group of surfers and skaters.

He hit on both, selling the companies.

When Kelley began going to the track with friends, he met Dado. He was swept up by Great Friends Stable and the fun that tagged along for the ride.

“I don’t know anything about horse racing,” Kelley said. “I can’t even read a racing form.”

Divergent backgrounds. And quite the scene.

“On any given day, we have people in shorts and baseball hats up to folks in the Turf Club with jackets, dresses and hats,” La Loggia said.

The group now has 20 shares costing $20,000 apiece. Want a bigger piece of a share? Sure. Want to break it up like a jigsaw puzzle? Sure.

They use the operating budget of $400,000 to lean on accomplished trainer Doug O’Neill. He and Dado lead decisions on diversifying the horse portfolio, from modest claiming horses to more accomplished resumes.

The Breeders’ Cup horses are thanks in very large part by North County businessman Mark Davis (no, not the owner of the NFL’s Raiders). He invited the group to join in with the four-legged stars who will have the group gnawing pre-race nails soon.

“We’re so lucky to have two at Del Mar,” La Loggia said. “I call it the Olympics of horse racing, because it’s truly an international championship. It would be like winning a gold medal.

“Without Mark Davis, we wouldn’t be able to be involved with horses of this caliber.”

Ken Ramirez, who lives in Solana Beach, leads Western U.S. sales of the sports drink brand BodyArmor.

Raging Torrent shocked The Chosen Vron, a huge 1-2 favorite, a $1.7 million winner who had captured 14 of his previous 15 races, during the Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar in August.

He trailed by a nose late before surging to a tight win.

“That’s why they run,” Ramirez said. “A 40-1 shot or a 3-5, odds-on favorite, they all have a shot.”

A horse ignited a dream.

“I think the dream for everybody is to have that one or two horses that could potentially compete in the Kentucky Derby or the Breeders’ Cup,” La Loggia said. “And to have a horse with a real shot? We all keep coming back because of the community, but this is the icing on the cake.”

The common tug? Why not us?

“We never got into this to be full-time horsemen,” Kaplan said. “You get some money back, put the winner’s circle picture on the wall and say, ‘I had a great summer at Del Mar.’ All of a sudden, it’s getting serious.

“When you watch your horse race, your heart jumps out of your chest. Now, in a race of this magnitude, with this amount of money on the line, to have a horse in this race, to have a legitimate shot and to be at Del Mar, that’s the ultimate.”

The winner’s circle? Better make a little extra room, just in case.

Breeders Cup at Del Mar

— Friday, Nov. 1 Cup races: Juvenile Turf Sprint (2:45 p.m.), Juvenile Fillies (3:25), Juvenile Fillies Turf (4:05), Juvenile (4:45), Juvenile Turf (5:25)

— Saturday, Nov. 2 Cup races: Filly & Mare Sprint (noon), Turf Sprint (12:41), Distaff (1:21), Turf (2:01), Classic (2:41), Filly and Mare Turf (3:25), Sprint (4:05), Mile (4:45), Dirt Mile (5:25)