Northern California dates set
The California Horse Racing Board has set the 2017 racing dates for Northern California and will finalize them at the December meeting after hearing whether the Sonoma County Fair at Santa Rosa decides to run two weeks or three.
Golden Gate Fields will run from Dec. 21, 2016 through June 20, 2017. It will hold a short summer meeting from Aug. 23-Sept. 19 and a fall meet from Oct. 18-Dec. 19.
The dates set for the fair tracks are as follows: Pleasanton, June 21-July 11; the State Fair at Sacramento, July 12-Aug. 1; Santa Rosa, Aug. 2-22; Ferndale, Aug. 23-Sept. 5; Pleasanton fall meet, Sept. 20-Oct. 3; and Fresno, Oct. 4-17.
The CEO of the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Becky Bartling, held a meeting with her fair board Tuesday night to weigh options about racing a third week, without the fair.
“It’s so complicated for us because we have such a big livestock program, and the challenge is we don’t know what the school dates are,” she said.
If Santa Rosa opts to run for only two weeks, Ferndale’s meet would start and end one week earlier. That would give Ferndale a week when it wasn’t overlapped with Golden Gate.