Four stakes highlight brief fall meet

The shortest race meeting of the year in Southern California begins at Los Alamitos on Thursday – a two-week season of eight racing days.

Los Alamitos conducts eight weeks of daytime Thoroughbred racing annually. The Los Angeles County Fair meeting in September is run over three weeks each year, while the summer meeting in early July and the winter meeting last two or three weeks.

The upcoming season is highlighted by two $300,000 Grade 1 races for 2-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles on Saturday – the Los Alamitos CashCall Futurity and the Starlet for fillies.

This is the last year they will both be Grade 1 races for the foreseeable future. Last week, the American Graded Stakes Committee announced the Los Alamitos Futurity will be downgraded to a Grade 2 race in 2019. Los Alamitos racing secretary Bob Moreno, who said he voiced displeasure to a committee member, fears a downgraded race will affect his ability to draw runners from across the nation.

“I did say something about it,” Moreno said. “That might cost me a couple of nominations from people back east. This was always the last Grade 1 race of the year for 2-year-olds.”

Overall, there are four stakes at the winter meeting. There are two $100,000 stakes for California-bred 2-year-olds at a mile – the Soviet Problem Stakes for fillies on Dec. 15 and the King Glorious Stakes on Dec. 16.

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Unlike Del Mar or Santa Anita, Los Alamitos does not have a turf course and runs primarily sprints, with an emphasis on lower-priced claimers. To draw fields, Moreno is forced to be creative with race conditions, frequently offering starter allowances, claiming races for horses that are non-winners of two or three races, and claiming races for horses that have not won since a specific date.

Moreno is optimistic this month’s meeting will improve on the average of 7.54 runners at the corresponding three-week meeting in 2017. The Los Angeles County Fair meeting had an average of 6.84 runners per race, and the Los Alamitos summer meeting earlier this year averaged 6.9 runners. The 2016 December meeting had an average of 7.9 runners, the highest since the track began running Thoroughbred races in 2014 following the 2013 closure of Hollywood Park.

This year, there is a 10-day gap between the final day of the Los Alamitos meeting on Dec. 16 and the start of the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26. Moreno is hoping that horsemen will want to get in starts for their horses before the break, the longest of the year in Southern California.

Of a more immediate concern is the weather. Rain is expected on Wednesday into Thursday.

“I’m hoping for the best and hoping the weather holds off,” Moreno said. “That track does hold up well with the weather.”