Allred balks at six-month license for Los Alamitos Quarter Horse meet

Los Alamitos officials will ask the California Horse Racing Board to reinstate the track’s request for a yearlong license for its 2021 evening meeting for Quarter Horses and lower-level Thoroughbreds and not the decision reached on Thursday for a license for the first six months of the new year.

The racing board approved the track’s license from Dec. 26 to June 30. Track officials sought a license through December 2021.

In a telephone conversation Thursday evening, track owner Ed Allred said the six-month license is detrimental to the long-term viability of the evening meeting and that he would ask the racing board for “immediate reconsideration” of its decision.

The racing board’s next scheduled meeting is Jan. 21.

Allred cited commitments made by Quarter Horse owners nationwide to pay leading horses into futurities and derbies through the year at Los Alamitos as the main issue regarding the racing board’s decision. A six-month license, he said, could lead some participants to cease nominating payments out of concern whether the track would operate in the second half of 2021.

“They don’t realize what that does, or what that could do,” Allred said of the decision. “I’ll do all I can to counteract that.

“Increasingly, more and more people are coming from the east for our futurities. We’re not going to give up, but I’m very discouraged by it.”

The 2020-21 race meeting will start as scheduled, he said.

“I’m going to give it a try,” Allred said.

Allred expressed concern about field sizes and availability of runners through the winter months, prior to the start of 2-year-old racing in early April. The addition of races for 2-year-olds strengthens the track’s horse population.

Allred expressed surprise at the racing board’s decision, reached by a vote of 5-1, to grant a six-month license. For decades, the track has been granted approval for a yearlong license.

Racing board vice chairman Oscar Gonzales proposed a motion at Thursday’s meeting to grant a six-month license in order to review the track’s safety record through the first half of 2021. After his motion failed to pass on a 3-3 vote of the six commissioners involved in the teleconference meeting, another motion to grant a yearlong license failed to pass on a 3-3 vote despite support from racing board chairman Greg Ferraro. The motion needed four votes to pass.

Amidst a tense discussion, Gonzales resubmitted his motion, urging Allred to follow through with medication and veterinary reforms introduced earlier this year following a series of equine fatalities. After a brief conversation, the racing board approved the measure by a vote of 5-1.

Commissioners Damascus Castellanos and Dennis Alfieri supported Gonzales’s second motion after voting against the motion in the first vote. Alfieri called for the track to continue medication and veterinary reforms.

Ferraro cast the dissenting vote, saying the racing board could review the track’s safety record at any time and take action, if needed.

“I think we’re making a mistake,” Ferraro said.

Commissioner Alex Solis, the retired Hall of Fame jockey, did not participate in Thursday’s meeting.

In July, the racing board put the track’s evening meeting on a 10-day probation after a series of equine fatalities in preceding months. The track introduced additional safety measures and greater veterinary oversight protocols, which received the approval of the racing board by a vote of 6-0 on July 20.

Allred, who has owned Los Alamitos since 1994 and has operated a race meeting at the track since the early 1970s, reacted angrily during testimony at Thursday’s meeting. He told the racing board “don’t bother” to approve the license on a partial basis and that the track had no objection to a safety review at any time.

In the conversation on Thursday evening, Allred said closure of the track would lead to development of the property. In addition to the yearlong evening meeting, the track conducts up to three brief afternoon meetings for Thoroughbreds and hosts year-round training for Thoroughbreds that race at Del Mar and Santa Anita.

Allred said he was hopeful that opinions of racing board members would change in coming weeks, led by support from Ferraro.

“The chairman is in favor of what we are doing,” Allred said. “I think he’s very disappointed about it.”

Earlier at Thursday’s meeting, the racing board approved enhanced veterinary protocols that prohibit horses to be entered at the 2020-21 Los Alamitos evening meeting if they have been given an intra-articular injection within 14 days of a race, if they have been administered an intra-articular injection of a corticosteroid in a joint within 30 days of a race, or for 60 days if a horse has been administered two intra-articular injections of a corticosteroid in the same joint.

Upon arrival of that measure, Ferraro praised Los Alamitos.

“You guys have come a long way to solve the problems,” Ferraro said.

“I compliment you on your bravery and fortitude to work these things out. We hope these conditions will eliminate the catastrophic injuries.”

In other matters discussed at Thursday’s meeting, executive director Scott Chaney said the racing board would hear an appeal in January of a recent decision by a board of stewards at Santa Anita not to disqualify Justify from the 2018 Santa Anita Derby despite a scopolamine positive. In their decision, the stewards cited mitigating circumstances and that the positive was likely caused by accidental contamination.

Mick Ruis, who owns Bolt d’Oro, the second-place finisher in the race, has asked the racing board to overturn the stewards’ decision.

The racing board approved a measure that will prohibit the administration of the anti-bleeder medication furosemide, also known as Lasix, in stakes beginning Jan. 1. As part of an agreement between the Thoroughbred Owners of California and racetracks, an exception will be made for California-bred stakes for 4-year-olds and older.