Meet opens amidst uncertainty about the future
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This should be a breakthrough year for Northern California trainer Isidro Tamayo, a chance to surpass a milestone season in 2022.
Through Thursday, Tamayo has 81 wins in 2023, well within range of exceeding a career-best 100 victories in 2022. With trainer Jonathan Wong provisionally suspended for a medication violation in Indiana earlier this summer, Tamayo is the logical choice to lead the standings at the six-week Golden Gate Fields meeting that begins on Saturday with an eight-race program and runs through Oct. 2.
Winning the title is not foremost on Tamayo’s mind. Of greater concern is the future of Northern California racing.
Golden Gate Fields will cease operating in December, or perhaps next June, after the track’s parent company, 1/ST Racing, announced on July 16 that it will close the track for development. 1/ST Racing also owns Santa Anita in Southern California, and is hoping to lure numerous stables to relocate.
Such a drastic change is not a first preference for the 37-year-old Tamayo.
“Hopefully, we’ll be running in Northern California, but if something happens and we don’t run we’d probably have to send a barn south,” he said on Thursday. “We’re hoping something works out.”
At California Horse Racing Board meetings earlier this month, 1/ST Racing officials said discussions will take place in coming weeks and months about potentially racing at Golden Gate Fields through mid-June of 2024.
Since 1/ST Racing’s shock announcement to close Golden Gate Fields, county fair executives have held discussions about replacing Golden Gate Fields with race meetings at fair locations to continue the sport in Northern California. No formal plans have been announced.
When Golden Gate Fields reopened its barn area earlier this month, Tamayo noted a sense of caution among backstretch staff.
“The mood was a little deflated,” he said. “We still don’t know what will happen. A lot of people are scared. People that live on the backstretch are thinking, Where do we go?”
The racing schedule for the upcoming meeting was changed earlier this summer as part of an experiment. The track will race on a Saturday-through-Monday schedule, instead of a Friday-through-Sunday basis, in an effort to attract more attention from an otherwise slim selection of Thoroughbred simulcasting signals on Monday.
The decision was made with the idea of a potential long-range change, particularly for the six-month winter-spring meeting the track has run in the past. A month after the announcement, the track announced its closure in the near future.
Tamayo, who began training in 2017, has a 70-horse stable and had a successful winter-spring meeting at Golden Gate Fields earlier this year. Wong won the title with 56 wins, three more than second-place Tamayo.
Wong has won every training title at the 16 non-fair meetings at Golden Gate Fields since the beginning of 2018.
Though reluctant to make predictions, Tamayo has high hopes for the upcoming Golden Gate meeting. He has seven horses entered at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale in the far north of the state on Friday and Saturday, and seven horses entered on Saturday and Sunday at Golden Gate Fields.
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The stable continues to operate at full strength despite a discouraging atmosphere.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Tamayo said of the future. “I try not to. There will be a lot of people that will be affected by that.”
As for another 100-win milestone this year, Tamayo expects to reach that goal.
“I would think so,” he said. “I’m a guy that goes week by week and puts horses in the best spots. The wins will come.”
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