SAN DIEGO — In the late-1990s, the Del Mar media relations crew would offer writers gifts that included futures tickets for the track's Futurity winner at the following year's Kentucky Derby.

So Dan Smith, whom the press box is now named after, and Mac McBride drew out $500 from track coffers, drove to Las Vegas and snapped up $10 win tickets.

In 1996, the group was able to lock down 50-to-1 odds for a horse that rapidly was becoming a hugely promising 3-year-old. And ... Silver Charm won the '97 Derby.

"It was a way of continuing the interest in racing," Smith said.

One of those getting a very profitable ticket was legendary San Diego broadcaster Ernie Myers.

"He lost the ticket," Smith said.

Smith, McBride and longtime San Diego Union and Union-Tribune horse racing reporter Hank Wesch laughed during a recent roundtable, talking through Del Mar's connections to the Derby on the verge of its 150th running.

Four Futurity champions — Tomy Lee (1958), Gato Del Sol (1981) and American Pharoah (2014), along with Silver Charm — carried winning ways into the Derby the next year.

Long odds extended to the 2005 race, when Giacomo and veteran Southern California trainer John Shirreffs rocked the bluebloods at 50-1.

For Shirreffs, a three-time Breeders' Cup winner, it was his sole Triple Crown win. He finished in the money, though, with Giacomo at the 2005 Preakness Stakes and, in 2007, Tiago in the Belmont Stakes.

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