Rain prompts Santa Anita to cancel Thursday program
ARCADIA, Calif. - Persistent rain through the week and the forecast for a very wet day led Santa Anita officials to cancel Thursday’s eight-race program. The decision was made early Thursday morning after a conference call among track officials.
“We’ve had almost three inches and there is a prediction of two to three more inches today,” director of racing Dan Eidson said early Thursday morning.
“That’s too much.”
Eidson said Santa Anita plans to reschedule the canceled races as early as on Sunday and Monday. He said 10-race programs will be scheduled for those days. A 10-race program on Saturday will begin at noon.
The latest in a series of rain storms arrived in Southern California on Wednesday evening and was expected to deliver significant rain through Thursday. There were reports of flooding in parts of Southern California, making travel difficult.
“We were confident the track would hold up,” said Tim Ritvo, the chief operating officer of Santa Anita’s parent company, The Stronach Group.
“Getting the horses up to the races and thinking of the customers and local flooding played into it, too. It was a business decision.”
The weekend forecast is favorable, with temperatures expected in the 60s and no rain forecast.
This is the first cancellation in Southern California since Los Alamitos lost a weekday last July because of excessive heat.
