Santa Rosa opens seven-day meet

The Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif., begins a two-week race meeting on Thursday, the only venue of the five racing fairs in Northern California with a turf course.

The course will be in action extensively through the seven-day meeting, which runs from Thursday through Sunday this week and from Aug. 11-13.

There are seven-race programs on Thursday and Friday, with three turf races on Thursday and four on Friday. There are two $75,000 stakes at 1 1/16 miles on turf during the brief meeting – the Luther Burbank Stakes for fillies and mares on Saturday, and the Robert Dupret Derby for 3-year-olds on Aug. 12.

This is the first race meeting with any turf racing in Northern California since the conclusion of the Golden Gate winter-spring meeting on June 11. The Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton and Cal-Expo in Sacramento held fair meetings in June and July, but race only on dirt. The Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale and the Big Fresno Fair later this year hold races on dirt.

With turf racing, Santa Rosa may have better average field sizes than the two preceding fair meetings.

Pleasanton averaged 5.97 runners per race, a decline from 6.16 at the 2022 meeting. Sacramento averaged 5.42 runners, a slight decrease from 5.45 in 2022.

Santa Rosa lost a day of racing in 2022 because of insufficient entries, and averaged 5.25 runners per race on six days of racing. The 2022 fair was the first in Santa Rosa since 2019. The 2020 and 2021 fair meetings were held at Golden Gate Fields because of the pandemic.

Thursday’s program drew 42 runners before scratches, while Friday’s card drew 55.

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