Santa Anita plays supporting role during fall meet

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita opens a five-week autumn meeting Friday that will have a different feel than in most recent years.

Last year, the autumn meeting built toward the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita on the first weekend of November. This year, Santa Anita concludes its autumn meeting Oct. 29, and the Breeders’ Cup will be at Del Mar on Nov. 3-4. It will be the first time since 1997 that a Breeders’ Cup will be held in Southern California but not at Santa Anita. The 1997 Breeders’ Cup program was held at Hollywood Park.

Santa Anita has been the de facto home for the Breeders’ Cup in the last decade, hosting the event six times. This year’s Santa Anita autumn meeting more closely resembles the 2015 meet, when the Breeders’ Cup was run at Keeneland.

The emphasis of the Santa Anita autumn meeting is on the first Saturday, which includes five Grade 1 races that are preps for the Breeders’ Cup. This Saturday’s program will be one of the best attended of the 19-day season.

The five Grade 1 races, each worth $300,000, provide the winners with automatic berths to Breeders’ Cup races.

The Awesome Again Stakes is a prep for the BC Classic, while the FrontRunner Stakes leads to the BC Juvenile. There are three races for females Saturday – the Chandelier for 2-year-olds (a prep for the BC Juvenile Fillies), Rodeo Drive Stakes on turf (BC Filly and Mare Turf), and Zenyatta Stakes (BC Distaff).

Track executive vice president Joe Morris said an ontrack crowd of 18,000 to 20,000 is expected for the first Saturday program at Santa Anita since Fourth of July weekend, when the spring-summer meeting ended.

“I’m expecting a good meeting,” Morris said. “It’s lining up well for us.

“There is something for everyone, from handicapping contests to Octoberfest. Something for the high-end gambler and first-time people coming to the track.”

After Saturday’s program, there is one more Grade 1 race at the meeting – the $300,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship on Oct. 7.

Racing will largely be conducted on a Thursday-through-Sunday basis, with a Monday program Oct. 9. There is no racing on Thursday, Oct. 12. Post times will be 1 p.m. Pacific on Thursdays and Fridays and 12:30 p.m. on weekends and Oct. 9.

Field sizes will be closely scrutinized during the meet. During the spring-summer meeting, Santa Anita canceled four Thursdays in April and June because of insufficient entries. The track reverted to a three-day racing calendar for three weeks in June and saw an increase in field size during that span.

Morris expects sufficient entries to run four days a week this fall. Friday’s nine-race program drew 76 entries.

Friday’s card has three turf races, the first grass races in Southern California since Sept. 4, closing day of the Del Mar summer meeting. The 12-day Los Angeles County Fair meeting at Los Alamitos, which ended Sunday, was run on dirt.

Friday’s turf races attracted fields of 10, 10, and 11 – the biggest on the program. The six dirt races drew fields ranging from five to nine entrants.

“Field size should be over eight a race,” Morris said, predicting the average for the meet. “Saturday looks really strong.”