Santa Anita turf course to get a freshening

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita’s turf course will undergo a refurbishment following Sunday’s final day of the autumn meeting, with the course showing wear and tear and an increase in divots and kickback compared to previous seasons.

Track president Keith Brackpool said the grass will be cut short on Monday to allow for regrowth and reseeding before the start of the winter-spring meeting Dec. 26. Brackpool acknowledged in an interview over the weekend that the course has not been in ideal shape since the autumn meeting began Sept. 26.

“We tried some things at the end of the last meeting and the start of this meeting,” Brackpool said. “Some worked, and some didn’t. It looks different.”

Brackpool did not elaborate on the unsuccessful maintenance attempts. He said hot weather played a factor in the course’s condition. Southern California was hit with a heat wave from August until earlier this month, with temperatures sometimes reaching 100 degrees during the day and the nights remaining warm.

Rafael Bejarano, the leading rider at the meeting, said on Sunday he has not been pleased with the course. He described the course as “uneven” and “a little dangerous.”

“It has a lot of holes,” he said.

Bejarano rode Royal Banker to a win in a $25,000 claimer on turf in Sunday’s seventh race. Royal Banker is trained by Doug O’Neill, who said he has seen no increase in injuries to his turf runners.

“We haven’t run a ton on the grass, but we’ve been okay,” O’Neill said. “I understand it hasn’t dried out as well as it should with the rain.”

O’Neill said the course’s condition is better than what he has experienced on other circuits this year.

“When you look at the turf courses back East, to me, this course is Grade 1,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty good situation here. You can win from all over the course.”

The course has been used about the same amount as last year. Through Sunday, there had been 42 turf races at the meeting, compared with 46 during a similar span last year. There have been an average of 9.36 runners per race this year, compared with 9.07 runners during the same time last year. There were two races taken off the turf Oct. 4 because of wet conditions. Some rain has fallen since then. The course was listed as “good” from Friday through Sunday.

Santa Anita’s turf course has undergone frequent maintenance in the last 18 months. In May 2014, the course was deemed too firm, resulting in a two-day break to allow the course to be aerated and extensively watered. The track conducted the Breeders’ Cup championship races last fall without incident.

The course was aerated in late April this year, resulting in slower times through much of May and June.

The course has been used more extensively in the last 20 months than at any time since turf racing began here in 1953. With the closure of Hollywood Park in December 2013, Santa Anita ran for six consecutive months from late December to early June 2014 and during a similar span from last December through June this year.

Before Hollywood Park closed, the course was not used from late April to late September each year, allowing the surface to be scalped and given extensive time for regrowth.

In 2016, the calendar will change slightly. The track is scheduled to run a winter-spring meeting from Dec. 26 to April 10 and a spring-summer meeting from May 5 to July 10. Los Alamitos will race for three weeks in April, allowing the Santa Anita turf course to be rested. The track will run two weeks later into July than in past years, narrowing the break between the end of the summer meeting and the start of the autumn meeting in late September.

The track’s 2016 autumn meeting includes the Breeders’ Cup.