Los Alamitos cancels Thursday card due to limited entries

CYPRESS, Calif. - Los Alamitos has canceled Thursday's racing after failing to draw sufficient entries on Saturday, racing secretary Bob Moreno said.

Moreno was hoping to fill an eight-race program, but had sufficient entries for only “four or five” races.

Racing will be conducted from Friday, Sept. 24 through Sunday, Sept. 26, the final weekend of the three-week season, which is run as the Los Angeles County Fair meeting.

The meeting began Sept. 10 and has struggled to draw sufficient runners at a venue that has only dirt racing. Turf racing has taken a larger role in the day-to-day programs at Del Mar and Santa Anita in recent years, and the absence of a turf course has hampered Los Alamitos' effort to draw runners.

Moreno expressed concern at the start of the season about finding sufficient runners for a four-day racing week to end the brief season.

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Through Friday, the fourth day of a meeting now scheduled for nine days, fields averaged 6.24 runners per race, compared to 6.7 runners per race at the track’s two-week summer meeting in late June and early July.

The 2020 county fair meeting was held last December. There was no daytime Thoroughbred racing at Los Alamitos in September 2020. In September 2019, the county fair meeting averaged 6.6 runners per race.

In the summer of 2019, Los Alamitos canceled three days of racing because of a limited horse inventory. Two days were eliminated from the three-week meeting before the season started, while a weekday in July was lost because of insufficient entries.