CHRB Sets SoCal Dates for Next Three Years

The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) on Aug. 25 unanimously approved a three-year template of race dates for tracks in the southern tier of the state while deferring until its September meeting a vote on future race dates at northern tracks.

The proposal through 2019 was reached via agreement among SoCal stakeholders–Santa Anita Park, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, Los Alamitos Race Course, and the Thoroughbred Owners of California–and had been jointly proposed to the CHRB's Race Dates Committee on Aug. 22.

The SoCal dates for 2017 are outlined below. The template of the year-round schedule dates will be the same for 2018 and 2019, with actual dates dependent upon how the calendar falls. (The dates below reflect the entire allocated block for each race meet, and not necessarily individual starting and ending race days.)

Santa Anita: Dec. 21, 2016-July 4, 2017
Los Alamitos: July 5-July 18, 2017
Del Mar: July 19-Sept. 5, 2017
Los Alamitos: Sept. 6-26, 2017
Santa Anita: Sept. 27-Oct. 31, 2017
Del Mar: Nov. 1-28, 2017
Los Alamitos: Nov. 29-Dec. 19, 2017

“This is a three-year rolling allocation of dates. That's the plan,” said CHRB chairman Chuck Winner. “Part of the agreements between the parties in some cases goes as far as 10 years, so it's a very complicated agreement that everybody has reached…The board will have the ability on an annual basis to review and to make changes as the board so requires.”

Such a change, for example, could come in 2019, if Santa Anita is awarded the currently open host status for the Breeders' Cup (BC) World Championships. In 2017, Del Mar is scheduled to host the BC for the first time.

In separate business, when the CHRB approved the upcoming autumn 2016 meet at Santa Anita, track officials updated the board on the status of the refurbished dirt track, new turf course, and new backstretch video surveillance system.

Joe Morris, the senior vice president of West Coast operations for Santa Anita's owner, The Stronach Group, noted that after taking on 12 inches of rain during the recent spring meet, the main track was due for an overhaul.

”We came in with the lasers to set grade, and we took it back to original grade and then added more material into it,” Morris said. “We're in the process now of maintaining it as we would on any race day, so for two weeks leading up [to its opening for training], we're putting the same amount of water onto it and the same procedures on the grooming of it.”

Morris said the composition of the main track will be similar to the dirt makeup at the previous Santa Anita meet, and confirmed that it is the same type of material currently in use at Del Mar.

“It's the same source, the El Segundo sand, but the climates [of Santa Anita and Del Mar] are totally different.”

Rick Hammerle, Santa Anita's vice president of racing, said there would be no turf workouts allowed on a regular basis over the new course, but that a few experienced riders would be permitted to test horses over it prior to the beginning of the meet.

Morris said the extensive new video surveillance system “will be the first in the country of this type of a program with the number of cameras that we have.”

The cameras aren't in individual stalls, but Morris said every entrance to every stall on the grounds will be under surveillance, activated by motion sensors. Owners and trainers who want to review footage of their barns will be asked to fill out a request form, and Morris added that the track will work “very closely” with CHRB investigators to provide access to the footage.

“This is a large investment. The entire backstretch, all shed rows, side shed rows, the chute rows in between, the tunnels, and the tracks are now under surveillance,” Morris said.
Given the consolidation of racing venues in SoCal and the arrival of a significant amount of shippers for this autumn's BC, Hammerle said stall space is a premium.

“We have taken maybe a closer look at some of the stall situations, and then of course with the upcoming Breeders' Cup taking 10%, maybe 15%, of our stable area for them, we have constricted a little bit,” Hammerle said. “So maybe we have been a little tighter on certain horses. As the stall applications have just been turned in, and stall assignments have been given out in the past few days, I would say that 90% of the trainers maybe took a little bit of a hit in what they normally have…but it's been done equally.”

Prior to the CHRB meeting, a small group of animal welfare activists protested outside the meeting's Del Mar location in protest of the spate of equine deaths in training and during races at the track's current meet, which activists cited were as high as 19 based on CHRB stewards' reports.

About a half-dozen of the activists spoke during the public commentary period of the meeting, with several calling for the immediate halting of racing at Del Mar and the launching of a more thorough investigation beyond the standing necropsy procedures that the CHRB already has in place. The activists' input was received respectfully by the board, but the CHRB undertook no action to change the way equine deaths are currently investigated. @thorntontd