California board may vote this week on 2021 date proposals

The 2021 California racing schedule could be finalized as soon as this week.

The California Horse Racing Board’s dates committee has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday via teleconference to discuss proposals recently submitted by some racetracks and the Thoroughbred Owners of California. On Thursday, the full racing board is scheduled to meet via teleconference and could act on racing dates, or defer the subject to a future meeting.

In past years, hearings on racing dates have started in late summer and sometimes been extended for months.

Written proposals for the Southern California circuit in 2021 resemble calendars from recent years, with some variations.

The Thoroughbred Owners of California, the state’s official representative of horsemen, and Del Mar have offered similar plans with a winter-spring meeting at Santa Anita beginning on Dec. 26 of this year, summer meetings at Los Alamitos and Del Mar, the Los Angeles county fair meeting at Los Alamitos in September, and autumn meetings at Santa Anita, Del Mar, and Los Alamitos, ending on Dec. 19, 2021.

The TOC and Del Mar have requested that Del Mar run a summer meeting for nine weekends – from the weekend of July 9-11 through Labor Day, Sept. 6. A similar schedule is in place this year.

In 2019, Del Mar raced over eight weeks in the summer, but ran a seven-week season for many years prior to that.

The TOC and Del Mar proposals are different than the calendar in place in coming months.

This year, the Los Angeles county fair meeting is being run at Los Alamitos in December and the Santa Anita autumn meeting will have its earliest start in history, on Sept. 19. The track was granted dates to start on the weekend of Sept. 11-13, but track officials will ask the racing board on Thursday to allow for a gap following the end of the current Del Mar meeting on Sept. 7.

This year, Los Alamitos is running five weeks of daytime Thoroughbred racing, having run eight weeks in the past. Los Alamitos had a two-week meeting in late June and early July and will have the three-week county fair meeting in December.

For 2021, Los Alamitos has requested eight weeks of racing, reverting to a calendar used only in 2016 – two weeks in April, three weeks in September for the county fair meeting, and three weeks in December.

Los Alamitos expanded its track to accommodate Thoroughbred racing in early 2014 following the closure of Hollywood Park in 2013. In 2014-15 and from 2017-19, the track ran a summer meeting between the end of the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting and the start of the Del Mar summer meeting, the county fair meeting in September and an autumn meeting in December.

The TOC and Del Mar schedules propose similar plans for Los Alamitos in 2021, although Del Mar has requested to race the weekend of Dec. 3-5, which would leave Los Alamitos with a two-week autumn meeting. The TOC proposal gives the first weekend of December to Los Alamitos.

The Stronach Group, the parent company of Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita, did not present a written proposal included in initial racing board documents for the dates committee meeting, although track officials are expected to speak at Wednesday’s teleconference and offer details for 2021.

The majority of Northern California racing will be held at Golden Gate Fields in 2021, but the schedule for the Northern California fair circuit is unsettled for the summer. The fair calendar has been a point of contention among officials with various fairs and Golden Gate Fields for more than a decade.

For 2021, the California Authority of Racing Fairs, which oversees racing for several venues, proposed the start of the circuit at Pleasanton from June 18 to July 11, followed by meetings at Cal-Expo in Sacramento from July 16 to Aug. 1, Ferndale from Aug. 27 to Sept. 6, and Fresno from Oct. 7-17. The Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, which is not part of CARF, would race in August.

Sonoma issued a different calendar, asking to operate its meeting from July 29 to Aug. 8 and for Pleasanton and Cal-Expo to be held one week earlier than what was presented in the CARF proposal.

Northern California racing dates were altered significantly this year because of the coronavirus outbreak. Pleasanton held a meeting, but racing was not held at Santa Rosa or Ferndale, with racing shifted to Golden Gate Fields earlier this month. Fresno is scheduled to race in October.