Autumn meeting opens; will continue through Dec. 11

Golden Gate Fields begins what is expected to be its second-to-last race meeting on Saturday with a nine-race program, the first of 25 days of racing through Dec. 11.

In July, executives with the track’s parent company, 1/ST Racing, said the autumn meeting would be the last at Golden Gate Fields before the property is sold. The company advised it was consolidating its racing holdings to its venue in Southern California at Santa Anita, near Los Angeles.

Officials with 1/ST Racing announced in September that Golden Gate will conduct a winter-spring meeting from late December to early June, which may be the track’s final season.

The California Horse Racing Board urged 1/ST Racing to conduct a meeting in early 2024 to allow more time for a replacement scheduled to be formed without Golden Gate Fields.

The 2024 racing calendar for Northern California has been finalized through Labor Day weekend. County fair locations, notably Cal-Expo in Sacramento and the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, have been mentioned as replacement venues should Golden Gate Fields follow its current plan to cease racing in June.

The autumn meeting that begins Saturday will be conducted on a Saturday-through-Monday format, similar to the track’s late summer meeting that ended on Oct. 2. In addition, there will be racing on Thanksgiving on Nov. 23.

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For the upcoming meeting, eight stakes are scheduled, with seven on consecutive Saturdays beginning Oct. 28. The richest race of the meeting is the Grade 3 Golden Gate Handicap, which was previously run as the Berkeley Handicap. The $100,000 race will be run at 1 1/16 miles on the synthetic main track on Nov. 4.

The first stakes of the season is the $75,000 Pike Place Dancer Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at a mile on turf on Oct. 28.

Purses are the same as the corresponding meeting last year.

Saturday’s program was well-supported with 82 runners entered before scratches. Sunday’s program is not as robust, with 67 runners entered in nine races.

In the last two years, the autumn season has had the highest field sizes of the three meetings run at Golden Gate Fields each year, with an average of 7.1 runners per race. Earlier this year, the winter-spring meeting that ended in June averaged 6.5 runners per race, compared to 6.59 runners at the corresponding meeting in 2021-2022.

The late summer meeting that ended earlier this month averaged 6.57 runners per race, compared to 6.41 at the 2022 late summer meeting.

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