Horse racing's Cambianica is dead at 79
Fermo Cambianica was beginning his rounds at Santa Anita one day last month, handing out his selections to friends throughout the grandstand, when he collapsed near the ground-floor food court. At first the 79-year-old handicapper refused a ride to the hospital across the parking lot from the racetrack. Then friends explained he wouldn't be allowed to go back to work in the press box until a doctor looked him over.
That was persuasive to a man who had gone to work in the local racetrack press boxes practically every day since 1955.
Cambianica died Saturday night at Arcadia Convalescent Center after a brief battle with cancer. His last visit to Santa Anita had been Wednesday, when the fifth race was named in his honor. He had announced plans to retire closing day of the Santa Anita season, which was Sunday.
A one-time Long Beach State basketball player and competitive ballroom dancer, Cambianica had been publicity director at Los Alamitos racetrack and served as a mutuel clerk for years, but was best known as a newspaper handicapper and turf writer for the Long Beach Press-Telegram (and, earlier, the Monrovia Citizen). For the past few months, Cambianica's picks appeared in consensus boxes throughout the Los Angeles Newspaper Group chain.
In the Santa Anita press box, where lately he was a virtually year-round fixture, he was beloved for his gentle sarcasm and his helpfulness. Colleagues never did figure out his penchant for sizeable place bets.
"Fermo has always been admired by his peers for his dedication, loyalty, friendship, sense of humor and willingness to help," racecaller Trevor Denman told the Santa Anita crowd Wednesday after the event named for Cambianica.
Though he pronounced his first name "Fairmo," friends generally said it simply as "Firmo." Invariably, as Denman announced that "the main track is fast and the turf course is firm," somebody in the press box would call out, ". . . and the turf course is Cambianica."
The first time I saw Fermo Cambianica, at Hollywood Park in the mid-1980s, I sized up the stoutly built man as a fearsome operator not to be messed with. Then I heard his distinctively squeaky voice and got to know him, and realized he was the gentlest guy in the box.
Handicapper Bob Ike knew Fermo for more than 20 years.
"But I don't remember the first time I met him," Ike said Sunday. "He was just always here."
Cambianica is survived by two brothers. No services are planned, but the local tracks should find a race to name in his memory for eternity.
An update, Sunday evening: During Cambianica's hospitalization, other handicappers helped out by making picks for him. The final selections under his byline appeared in Sunday's papers. On the 10-race card at Santa Anita, he had seven winners.