Santa Anita autumn meet to feature Breeders' Cup stakes preps

Santa Anita will run a six-week autumn meeting from Sept. 19 to Oct. 25 that will include 18 days of racing and important prep races on the first two weekends for the Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 6-7 at Keeneland.

Santa Anita was awarded autumn racing dates for a season that could have started as early as Sept. 11, but track officials have opted for a brief gap following closing day of the Del Mar summer meeting on Sept. 7.

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In recent years, the Los Angeles County Fair meeting was run at Los Alamitos in September between the Del Mar summer and Santa Anita autumn meetings. When 2020 racing dates were announced in 2019, the California Horse Racing Board voted to move the Los Angeles County Fair meeting at Los Alamitos to December this year.

Without racing at Santa Anita on Sept. 11-13, there will be nine weeks without racing in Southern California this year – seven weeks lost at Santa Anita because of the coronavirus pandemic from March 27 to May 10, and three days without racing at Del Mar from July 17-19 because of a coronavirus outbreak in the jockeys’ room.

The Santa Anita autumn meeting will include a race named in honor of the late California racing executive Sherwood Chillingworth, who led the Oak Tree Racing Association, which operated the autumn meeting at Santa Anita from 1969 to 2009.

Chillingworth, a horse owner who had a background in real estate development, died last October.

The Grade 3 Chillingworth Stakes for fillies and mares at 6 1/2 furlongs will be run Sept. 19 and was previously known as the L.A. Woman Stakes.

On Sept. 26, Santa Anita will run three Grade 1 races, each worth $300,000 – the American Pharoah, Awesome Again, and Rodeo Drive stakes – and the Grade 2, $200,000 Chandelier Stakes. The Sept. 27 program includes two Grade 2 races worth $200,000 – the Santa Anita Sprint Championship and the Zenyatta Stakes.

All are preps for Breeders’ Cup races. There will be 24 stakes at the autumn meeting.