Santa Anita: No racing Thursday due to insufficient entries
ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita has canceled Thursday’s program because of insufficient entries.
The track attempted to draw races for Thursday on Saturday, but could not draw enough runners. The entries were postponed until Sunday, but the situation did not improve. The track announced the cancellation at lunchtime.
Racing will resume Friday with nine races, according to track vice president of racing Rick Hammerle.
“We will not race on Thursday because of a lack of entries,” Hammerle said.
Santa Anita will be open for simulcasting on Thursday.
Cancellations caused by a lack of entries are rare at Santa Anita. The track did not run the final three Wednesdays of its 2010-2011 spring-summer meeting because of insufficient entries. During that season, Santa Anita ran four days per week in January and February before adding Wednesdays for part of March.
Earlier this year, the track lost three days of racing because of wet conditions.
In the summer of 2010, Hollywood Park canceled three days of racing because of insufficient entries.
Santa Anita has run two weeks of its spring-summer meeting, which began on April 14 and continues through July 4. The track added a day of racing last Thursday to make up for a lost day from the winter. An additional makeup day is scheduled for Thursday, June 1.
Through Sunday, the track has averaged 7.34 runners per race since April 14, slightly less than the average of 7.59 runners at the entire winter-spring meeting.
The field sizes are higher than what Los Alamitos drew during similar dates last April during a three-week meeting. For the first half of its 12-day meeting in 2016, Los Alamitos had 6.82 runners per meet. The 2016 spring meeting at Los Alamitos finished with 7.07 runners per race.