The Week in Review: Christmas Day: When Tracks Ran and Flourished

Christmas Day wasn't a good day to be a horseplayer. If you absolutely had to make a bet your only choices were some tracks from Australia, where our Monday night was their Tuesday afternoon, and you couldn't make your first bet until 9:05 p.m. ET. For most, with a belly stuffed full of Christmas dinner and, for some, a brain made fuzzy by one too many glasses of eggnog, you probably shouldn't be betting on Australian racing in the middle of the night. Not, anyway, if you're sane.

Then again, probably not too many people could have been looking for action on Christmas. Horseplayers know full well that the sport takes Christmas Day off, the only day of the year when not one North American racetrack is open for business.

But it might surprise you that that wasn't always the case, and Christmas Day used to be an occasion when a handful of tracks didn't just race but filled their stands with fans eager to celebrate the day at the betting windows.

With charts prior to 1992 not readily available, the best source for racing information from bygone eras is often the New York Times online archives. In the thirties, forties and fifties, not only did the Times have excellent racing coverage but would run charts and/or results from several tracks.

The first race ever held at Santa Anita was on Christmas Day, 1934. The $5,000 added Christmas Day S. was won by C.V. Whitney's High Glee before a reported crowd of 50,000. The Associated Press reported that the day was “…a huge success. Holders of general admission tickets arrived as early as 8 o'clock and by post time for the first race all seats were filled and the terrace in front of the stands was packed.”

Any time a new racetrack opens, especially one as one as grand as Santa Anita, there is a feverish atmosphere and a large crowd. That, and not the fact that it was Christmas, may have accounted some for the huge opening-day numbers, but Santa Anita continued to pack them in over the years on Christmas day.

In 1935, 45,000 showed up at Santa Anita on Christmas and the AP's reporter called it “the largest crowd ever to witness a turf program on the Western Seaboard” and noted that only 42,000 showed up for the Santa Anita Handicap. How they could draw 50,000 in 1934, yet the 45,000 that came in 1935 made Christmas Day “the largest crowd ever to witness a turf program on the Western Seaboard” means one report or the other was fake news. But you get the idea. Christmas Day at Santa Anita was a huge deal.

The last reference on the Times website to Christmas Day racing at Santa Anita was for the 1937 card when the crowd was again reported to be 50,000 and the handle was $789,159, a $190,000 increase from the year before.

Somewhere along the line, Santa Anita went to its current format, opening on the day after Christmas. But others kept going.

The Dec. 26, 1934 edition of the Times lists Christmas Day results from not just Santa Anita but from Tropical Park, the Fair Ground, Charles Town and Alamo Downs.

On Christmas Day 1950, Bill Shoemaker and Joe Culmone weren't taking it easy. In a battle for nation's leading rider, Shoemaker won four races at the Fair Grounds and Culmone won two at Tropical Park, which allowed The Shoe to close the gap to 373-371. The story noted that Shoemaker was going to finish out the year at Agua Caliente in Tijuano, Mexico because it was the only track in North America that would be racing on Dec. 31. Presumably, that's because that date happened to be on a Sunday. Tracks would race on Christmas Day but not on a Sunday? Go figure. The writer mentioned that the move to Mexico might give Shoemaker a chance to “overhaul the slender Sicilian.” The two finished the year tied at 388 winners each.

Somewhere along the line, they also stopped racing on Christmas Day at the Fair Grounds. But Tropical Park was a hold out. The Miami track continued to race on Christmas until it closed in 1972. And it was always a big day. The crowd was 15,168 in 1948, with the AP report noting it was the biggest turnout of the meet. In 1955, Christmas Day at Tropical drew 20,634 patrons.

When Tropical closed, its dates were taken over by Calder, which kept the tradition of Christmas Day racing going until 1994. Let history show that the last race run in the U.S. on Christmas Day was a $12,500 maiden claimer at Calder captured by Not Soon Enough, with jockey George Hosang in the saddle.

If Christmas racing was once a success in the U.S. could it be so again?

It seems odds that there would be no racing on Christmas in 2017 but plenty of it in 1934, a time when society's morals were stricter than they are today and gambling wasn't nearly as accepted.

That tracks now take the day off only seems fair, not so much for the fans and horseplayers but for the employees and horsemen. Yet, the country doesn't shut down on Christmas quite the way it used to. Across the country this Christmas, you could grab a burger at McDonald's, a coffee at Starbucks or breakfast, lunch or dinner at a Waffle House. Needed a last-minute stocking stuffer? The Family Dollar Store was open.

The NBA has embraced the day and turned it into a huge event. It always manages to match the leagues's two biggest draws on Christmas, just as it did Monday with last season's championship round rematch between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. There were four NBA games Monday, but if that was not enough to satisfy the appetite of the gambler, there was also a pair of NFL games plus four college basketball games to wager on.

Tropical Park is no more and Santa Anita doesn't need to go back to racing on Christmas because it has turned the day after into one of the biggest days of the meet. But what about the Fair Grounds or Gulfstream? Would it be sacrilegious to race there on Christmas? Perhaps. Would it be unfair to the employees? Absolutely. But they would pack the places.

It's just a thought.

The Islanders Moving Back to Long Island… Not Necessarily

It was noted with much fanfare last week that the New York Islanders will be headed back to Long Island with the opening of a new arena on the grounds of Belmont Park. The Islanders left Long Island in 2015 to play in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center, a move that backfired. Proud Long Islanders felt their team had abandoned their communities and many refused to travel to Brooklyn. That the team would be returning to its Long Island roots was met with much fanfare.

There is one problem, though.

While it is oftentimes difficult to assess exactly where the border between Queens and Long Island lies, the section of Belmont, past the western end of the grandstand, where the arena is going to be built, is almost certainly in Queens and not Long Island.

From a 2005 story in the New York Times: “[At Belmont] there are urban legends about the border – that horses rounding the far turn cross into Queens and then return to Nassau again for the stretch run, or that they once did, but the track has since been shifted to avoid city jurisdiction. 'Local maps do not bear that out,' the association said in a statement. Still, the railroad station serving the track, the ramp from it to the grandstand, and a fair amount of the nearby parking fields are indeed in Queens.”

The area described in the Times is exactly where the new arena is being built–in Queens.

Pletcher Wins Again at Tampa–Watch Out

No high profile trainer has embraced the Tampa Day Downs road to the GI Kentucky Derby more than Todd Pletcher has. Both of Pletcher's Derby winners, Super Saver (Maria's Mon) and Always Dreaming (Bodemeister), stopped off at Tampa Bay on their way to Louisville and last year both Always Dreaming and Belmont winner Tapwrit (Tapit) were winners at the Tampa meet. Pletcher has won the GII Tampa Bay Derby five times, including the last three runnings.

All of which is why it was so noteworthy that Pletcher sent his 2-year-old Vino Rosso (Curlin) across the state for what otherwise would have been a sleepy allowance race on a Friday at Tampa (video replay). There is the “who did he beat?” question, but the chestnut colt looked outstanding winning the $27,500 race and will no doubt be heard from again.