Santa Anita cancels next Thursday's card

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita has canceled racing next Thursday, and as a result there will be no racing here on Thursdays for three consecutive weeks. In late January, Santa Anita canceled the card for Thursday, Feb. 13, and the track is not scheduled to race Thursday, Feb. 20.

Track officials are hoping that racing fewer days will reverse a trend of declining field size this meet.

Through Thursday, the 17th day of the season, the track had run 148 races with an average field size of 7.56 runner per race since opening day on Dec. 28. At a similar point in the 2018-19 season, the track had run 21 days, 197 races, and averaged 7.72 runners.

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This past Thursday’s seven-race program averaged 6.57 runners and had ontrack handle of only $311,169 and attendance of 1,726. All-sources handle was $3,628,090.

Track officials said a mix of three- and four-day weeks will be utilized through the winter and spring. The meeting ends June 21.

“We want to have bumper days on Saturdays and Sundays,” Aidan Butler, chief of California operations for The Stronach Group, the track’s parent company, said Friday morning.

“It’s better to have quality fields. It seems the right thing to do.”

The number of race-ready horses has declined in Southern California in the last year because of competition for horses from tracks with higher purses, notably Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and Churchill Downs in Kentucky, and tougher medication rules and pre-race inspections required for starters in California following a series of equine fatalities at Santa Anita last winter and spring.

The California Horse Racing Board has ordered Santa Anita to eliminate 12 days of racing from the meeting. The track is allowed to choose which days to cancel. Feb. 6 and Feb. 13 are the third and fourth days the track has canceled this meet.