Ferndale opens two-week meeting

Closer to the Oregon border than to San Francisco, the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale is the northernmost racetrack in California, a tiny venue that begins its annual two-week meeting on Friday with six Thoroughbred races.

Befitting its location, Ferndale brings together stables from Northern California and Oregon to a half-mile racetrack located a few miles from the Pacific Ocean.

The brief season, which runs on a Friday-through-Sunday basis through Aug. 28, will primarily feature Thoroughbreds with a few Quarter Horse races included.

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This weekend, Ferndale is the only daytime racetrack operating in the state other than Del Mar, near San Diego. Ferndale will share Northern California action on the weekend of Aug. 26-28 with Golden Gate Fields, near Oakland.

On Friday’s card, which begins at 3:15 p.m. Pacific, there are several runners from Oregon who had their last starts at Grants Pass, Prineville, and Tillamook. Expected to dominate the jockey standings are Taylor Smith, the leading rider at the Tillamook meeting, which ended last Saturday, and Silvio Amador, a mainstay at Bay Area tracks.

Northern California trainers Quinn Howey, Isidro Tamayo and Jonathan Wong will have runners at Ferndale, competing with Oregon counterparts Teri Beckner, Emilio Guerrero and Gabriel Williams.

Those trainers are among the stables likely to be represented in the meeting’s most prestigious race – the $20,000 Humboldt County Marathon at 1 5/8 miles on Aug. 28. With the track’s small circumference, the field for the Marathon crosses the finish line four times.

Ferndale did not conduct a meeting in 2020 because of the pandemic, but had six days of racing last year, averaging 5.4 runners per race. Handle exceeded $12.7 million.

Field sizes are a constant concern on the Northern California fair circuit. The two-week Sonoma County Fair meeting in Santa Rosa ended on Sunday with a slump in field size from 6.06 runners in 2019 to 5.25 this year. Santa Rosa did not have fair meetings on the Sonoma County Fair property in 2020 or 2021.

Ferndale officials are hoping to have seven or eight races a day this weekend.