Much still up in air regarding Santa Anita fall meet

Santa Anita concluded a six-month winter-spring meeting Sunday – which was interrupted from late March to mid-May because of the coronavirus outbreak – without a clear indication of when racing would resume in September.

Track officials said Sunday that the start of the meeting could be delayed from its scheduled date of Sept. 11 to later in the month to provide a gap following the conclusion of the Del Mar summer season on Sept. 7.

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Last year, the California Horse Racing Board awarded Santa Anita racing days from Sept. 9 to Oct. 27. Santa Anita would accrue revenue from simulcasting on weekdays during that period.

Now, opening day is likely to be Sept. 18 or 25, track officials said. The meeting is scheduled to end Oct. 25.

Aidan Butler, executive director of California racing operations for The Stronach Group, the track’s parent company, said the horse population in Southern California at the end of the summer and the circumstances regarding the coronavirus pandemic could play a role in the racing calendar.

“I’m not sure how many weeks we’ll be running,” he said Sunday.

If Santa Anita does not race immediately after the Del Mar meeting, Los Alamitos might ask the racing board for permission to operate a brief meeting between the Del Mar and Santa Anita meets, a track official said Sunday.

Any change to the racing calendar would need racing board approval. The board has its monthly meetings scheduled for July and August. Santa Anita has yet to present a detailed license application for its fall meeting to the racing board that includes specific racing dates.

In 2019, the racing board rearranged the racing schedule for the late summer and early fall in Southern California, awarding September dates to Santa Anita. From 2014-19, Los Alamitos conducted the Los Angeles County Fair meeting at that time.

This year, Los Alamitos is scheduled to run the Los Angeles County Fair meeting from Dec. 4-20.

Los Alamitos is scheduled to have five weeks of racing this year compared to eight from 2014-19. The track opens its two-week summer meeting Friday.

The stakes schedule for the Santa Anita autumn meeting has not been finalized. Racing secretary Steve Lym said Sunday that the American Pharoah and Chandelier, Grade 1 stakes for 2-year-olds, are tentatively scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 3-4.

The Breeders’ Cup races will be run Nov. 6-7 at Keeneland. Santa Anita is likely to conclude its prep races for the Breeders’ Cup by the weekend of Oct. 10-11.

The Santa Anita meeting that ended Sunday lost 21 days of racing because of the coronavirus outbreak. The track was ordered closed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on March 27 when the track was deemed a nonessential business. The same government agency allowed Santa Anita to resume racing May 15.

Santa Anita raced without spectators for five days in March and from May 15 through Sunday. The absence of ontrack customers led to a decline in revenue from handle, resulting in a reduction in purses for nine stakes and for overnight purses in the final six weeks of the meeting.

The track canceled 14 stakes that were scheduled from late March to early May, largely because they overlapped with races on the revised calendar. The Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby and Grade 2 Santa Anita Oaks were postponed from April 4 to June 6.

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For the final six weeks of the meeting, jockeys were quarantined in temporary housing on racetrack property on racing nights to avoid spread of the coronavirus.

Field size averaged 7.5 runners at the winter-spring meeting, which began Dec. 28. The 2018-19 season averaged 7.36 runners per race and ran 734 races. The 2019-20 meeting had 527 races.

The 2018-19 meeting was marred by a series of equine fatalities that led to the cancellation of three weeks of racing in March 2019 to allow the main track to undergo inspection and renovation. When racing resumed in late March that year, a series of safety protocols were introduced to reduce equine fatalities. Those protocols remain in place.

Fields averaged 7.79 runners in the final six weeks of the meeting that ended Sunday. During the disruption caused by the pandemic in early spring, horses continued to train at Santa Anita.

“I think the horsemen did a helluva job of keeping the horses ready and fit,” Lym said.

On the racetrack, Flavien Prat led all riders with 90 wins, 29 in front of second-place Abel Cedillo. Peter Miller led trainers with 35 wins, two more than Bob Baffert.