Track targets increased field sizes as December meet opens

CYPRESS, Calif. – The key to the Los Alamitos winter meeting can be measured by a single-digit number.

For the 12-day season that begins Thursday, a vital sign of the season’s success or failure will be the number of runners per race. The more starters there are – the more interest there will be from race bettors and the higher the handle will be.

“As all our meets do, it will rise and fall on our field size and how well our races are supported,” said Brad McKinzie, the general manager of the track’s Thoroughbred meetings.

The winter meeting, which runs through Dec. 20, is the third Thoroughbred meeting of the year at Los Alamitos and the end of the second year in which the track has had a greater role on the Southern California Thoroughbred circuit. The Los Alamitos July and December meetings have replaced dates that were run at Hollywood Park until that track’s closure in 2013. The September meeting replaces dates previously run at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, which last conducted races in 2013.

Field sizes grew at Los Alamitos in July, to an average of 7.47 runners per race this year compared to 6.99 in 2014. Average field size was down slightly in September, to 7.65 runners per race compared to 7.73 in 2014. The December 2014 meeting had an average of 7.46 runners.

The track continues to conduct races at night for Quarter Horses and lower-level Thoroughbreds year round. Educating the local public that Los Alamitos also is offering racing during the day has been an ongoing process, said McKinzie.

“That’s been our challenge – to let people know we race during the day,” he said.

McKinzie said the track has advertised through direct mail and cable television in a 20-mile radius of the track, which consists largely of beach towns and suburbs in southern Los Angeles County and Orange County.

Los Alamitos does not have a turf course and will offer primarily a sprint-race program geared toward conditional claimers or starter-allowance class runners.

There are only four stakes at the meeting, down from seven at the December 2014 meeting. Mutuel handle failed to keep pace with expectations, leading to a reduction in prize money for some races and the elimination of other races, notably the $200,000 Bayakoa Stakes for older fillies and mares.

The two main races of the meeting are Grade 1, $300,000 races for 2-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles – the Starlet Stakes for fillies Dec. 12 and the Los Alamitos Futurity on Dec. 19. Last year, Take Charge Brandi, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2014, won the Starlet, while Dortmund, later third in the Kentucky Derby, won the Los Alamitos Futurity.

The Starlet field is likely to include the four-time stakes winner Stays in Vegas, while Toews On Ice, the winner of three consecutive stakes in Southern California, is a hopeful for the Los Alamitos Futurity.

The Starlet and Los Alamitos Futurity will not be run at Los Alamitos in 2016. McKinzie told the California Horse Racing Board in November that Los Alamitos will have only two weeks of racing in December 2016, giving the track insufficient time to generate adequate money from purses to afford the races.