Track closing leaves racing fans, employees out in the cold

ALBANY, Calif. – Since the early 1990s, well before he attended kindergarten, Dr. Luis Soto would make frequent trips to racetracks in the Bay Area with his father.

“I think the first time I went to the racetrack, I was 3,” Soto said on a recent Saturday.

The Sotos often visited Bay Meadows, in San Mateo, not far from their home. When Bay Meadows closed in 2008, the Sotos stayed with the sport, making excursions across the bridge to Golden Gate Fields, closer to Oakland. A table in the clubhouse on Breeders’ Cup Saturday was an annual event.

This year, the Sotos will need a new venue for the Breeders’ Cup.

Golden Gate Fields will close after Sunday’s program, the final day of the winter-spring meeting. The track’s closure was originally scheduled for last December. Racing was later extended through the winter-spring meeting.

Bay Area racing fans such as the Sotos will be without a nearby track, and will be forced to drive to Pleasanton, more than 30 miles from Golden Gate Fields, to attend live racing.

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“I’m really bummed this is closing,” Luis Soto said from a patio overlooking the track. He may as well have been speaking on behalf of countless racing fans in the region.

“I hope that Pleasanton doesn’t go away in 10 years. It’s not the same. It doesn’t have a view of the Bay.”

Soto, 36, is a biologist in post-doctoral training at Stanford University in Palo Alto, focused on cancer research. Racing offers a mental diversion, a chance to work through the puzzles of handicapping.

A self-described low-stakes bettor, Soto, who lives in San Francisco, often arrives at the track with a $100 bankroll and focuses on win and place bets with an occasional minor investment in the pick six.

“I keep it small,” he said. “I love horses and the handicapping. I’m not a big betting guy. I’m not going to come here and spend hundreds of dollars. I just like the races.”

Soto attended races at Golden Gate Fields for the final time on Memorial Day weekend, taking his longtime girlfriend for an outing in the Turf Club.

“I think it will be sad to say goodbye,” he said of closing weekend.

“I went to Pleasanton a long time ago. Now that there are no other places left, I’ll try to go.”

Golden Gate Fields, which first opened in 1941, and has raced annually since 1947, has been the hub of Bay Area racing since the closure of Bay Meadows. The track, adjacent to the San Francisco Bay, has a parking lot that offers gorgeous views of the Golden Gate Bridge, downtown San Francisco, and even Alcatraz Island in the distance.

The view has been a fixture in the life of Dennis Robles since 1965, the year he left the Marines and began working at Golden Gate Fields parking cars. Nearly 60 years later, he is still employed, working at the horsemen’s gate on the path leading from the racetrack to the stable area.

Robles will work until mid-June as operations wind down in the stables. Retirement is days away.

“My wife has been after me to retire,” he said in late April.

As a younger man, Robles, 81, worked in valet and assisted in parking control, guiding cars away from the nearby highway and up a hill into a parking lot adjacent to the bay.

“I was in valet for 45 years,” he said in a recent interview. “I directed traffic. I was a seller in the north lot.

“This place was packed. They’d have me go down to direct traffic and help highway patrol to get them off the freeway.

Ontrack crowds were much larger in the 1960s and 1970s, a time with different technology.

“At 1 p.m., people would be here in their business suits,” Robles said. “They didn’t have TV monitors on the tables back then. People would come out behind the glass in the clubhouse and lean over the rails behind the reserve seat section.”

So many people overlooking a track with sizable outdoor seating created memorable moments for Robles.

“There would be a tremendous roar from the crowd,” he said.

“It’s always been fun to me, seeing the people.”

Through the decades, Robles came to call some racetrack fans close friends, meeting people from all walks of life.

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“I’ve met thousands of people I’ve come to really respect and get to know,” he said.

Robles and his wife plan to travel this summer, visiting friends and family in the Midwest.

“I told her, ‘Don’t worry, you plan everything and I’ll be ready to go,’ ” he said.

When they return to California, the racing landscape in the Bay Area will be forever changed.

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