Pleasanton meet opens amid true county fair atmosphere
The Northern California fair circuit begins Friday with a four-week season at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton. This year, the event will truly have a county fair atmosphere.
For the first time since 2019, the Pleasanton meet will coincide with a full schedule of county fair events. The 2020 Pleasanton race meeting was held without fans because of the COVID pandemic. Last year, Pleasanton raced in the summer, but the county fair events were held in the autumn.
Last autumn, customers consumed 20,000 corn dogs and more than 8,000 funnel cakes. It is anyone’s guess whether those figures will be surpassed between Friday’s start and closing day on July 10.
Pleasanton is the first of five fair meetings in the northern half of the state in the summer and fall. The California State Fair in Sacramento meeting will be held from mid-July to early August, followed by the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa in early August, the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale in late August, and the Big Fresno Fair in October.
Pleasanton will conduct 13 days of racing on a Friday-through-Sunday basis as well as on Monday, July 4. There will be horses based at Pleasanton and Sacramento through the summertime fair meetings since Golden Gate Fields is undergoing a backstretch renovation and can’t stable horses.
Pleasanton has scheduled three $75,000 Thoroughbred stakes, the same as in 2021. The She’s a Tiger Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles is on June 25. The Oak Tree Sprint at six furlongs on July 2 is likely to draw some participation from Southern California stables. The July 9 Everett Nevin Stakes for 2-year-olds at 5 1/2 furlongs is the first stakes of the year for juveniles in Northern California.
Last year, Pleasanton ran 123 races for all breeds, averaging 5.77 runners per race, compared to 149 races that averaged 6.28 runners per race in 2020.
Friday’s opening day, which has a first post time of 1:45 p.m. Pacific, has seven races, the same as the opening day of the 2021 meeting. Friday’s program averages 6.5 entrants per race before scratches.
Trainer Jonathan Wong, who won the 1,000th race of his career last weekend, was the leading trainer at the 2021 Pleasanton meeting and at the Golden Gate Fields winter-spring meeting that ended Sunday.
On Friday, Wong has runners in five of the seven races, including Empire House in the sixth race, an allowance race/optional claimer for fillies and mares at 5 1/2 furlongs. Empire House, owned by Tommy Town Thoroughbreds, is winless in seven starts since a victory in an allowance race at Fresno last October.
Empire House faces Lagatha, the easy winner of an allowance race at six furlongs on May 29 at Golden Gate Fields as the odds-on favorite. Trained by Reid France, Lagatha is entered to be claimed for $62,500. Last Saturday, Lagatha was given a half-mile workout in 49 seconds at Pleasanton. She will race at Pleasanton for the first time Friday.