DEL MAR >> Kazushi Kimura rode into Del Mar this summer with expectations high for the three-time Canadian champion jockey who’d given hints of his talent at Santa Anita earlier in the year.

“There’s a spark of brilliance there,” Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert told San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller in July.

After Saturday’s races, Kimura’s first Del Mar season can be declared a definite success.

Kimura scored victories with Tenma (paying $8) in the $300,000 Grade I Del Mar Debutante and Hang the Moon ($43) in the $250,000 Grade II John C. Mabee Stakes.

The first of those was Kimura’s first Grade I win at Del Mar, and the second completed what the 25-year-old from Hokkaido, Japan, said is the first Grade I-Grade II double of his career.

Both wins were upsets, Tenma beating her Baffert stablemate Nooni and Hang the Moon shocking Anisette and Didia.

“It seems like everything’s good, right?” Kimura asked brightly when he was asked to sum up his Del Mar meet. “This is amazing. And tomorrow I might have a chance too.”

Today, closing day of the Del Mar meet, Kimura will be aboard contenders McKinzie Street in the $300,000 Grade I Del Mar Futurity and Sabertooth in the $100,000 Grade III Del Mar Juvenile Turf, both for trainer Tim Yakteen.

Saturday’s Kimura wins came for Baffert, giving the trainer a record 11th Del Mar Debutante, and Phil D’Amato, completing a stakes double for D’Amato after Hector Berrios rode Thought Process to a $2.80 victory in the $100,000 Del Mar Juvenile Fillies Turf.

Baffert is such an unstoppable force in the summer’s top 2-year-old races at Del Mar that he wins even when he loses.

If not for Tenma, Baffert and Baffert bettors would have remembered the Debutante for the disappointing performance by Nooni, the 4-5 favorite who faded to finish off the board after breaking stride while running in tight quarters on the turn for home.

Even without the trouble, Nooni and jockey Juan Hernandez might have struggled to win after battling with longshot Proud Starlet for the lead through early quarter-miles run in a faster-than-normal 21.50 and 44.38 seconds en route to a very average 1:23.67 for 7 furlongs.

Nooni, Proud Starlet and Night Beacon, 1-2-3 going into the far turn, ended up fifth, sixth and seventh. Tenma, Vodka With a Twist and So There She Was, fifth, fourth and sixth in mid-race, finished first, second and third.

“It wasn’t the way we were hoping it would set up,” said assistant trainer Jim Barnes, who’s in charge at Del Mar while Baffert is away at the Keeneland September yearling sale in Kentucky.

Barnes was speaking from the perspective of Nooni, the daughter of Win Win Win who’d lived up to her $1.8 million price at a 2-year-old auction last spring by winning her first two starts, the debut by 91/2 lengths at Santa Anita and the next by 11/2 in the Grade III Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar.

Tenma, now 2 for 2, is expected to get better as distances increased, and that made Kimura optimistic about a future that should include the 1 1/16-mile Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar on Nov. 1.

“I think she’s going to want to run farther,” Kimura said.