'Fear and anxiety': Horsemen react to Golden Gate closure

“Dismay, fear and anxiety.”

That’s how California Thoroughbred Trainers reacted to the news Sunday that Golden Gate Fields would close in December, according to a statement from CTT executive director Alan Balch.

It’s likely how much of the Northern California racing community felt when they got word that The Stronach Group planned to close the track by Dec. 19.

“The ramifications of this Stronach decision will be far-reaching and long-lasting,” Balch’s statement continued. “They will include, we believe, a great many unintended and mainly detrimental consequences for all of racing and Thoroughbred breeding throughout California and the West, including in Southern California. We can only hope that we are entirely wrong.”

He said the organization has contractual obligations that prohibit it from publicly disclosing the reasons “for our serious trepidation – all of which our CTT leadership has taken the initiative to discuss privately with Stronach management on several occasions, during last year and earlier this year.

“We can only say that we would have hoped those responsible for such a decision had taken their own contractual obligation for fairness, inclusion, communication, and honesty, as seriously as we have.”

Balch said his statement was made on behalf of all California trainers and their thousands of employees.

Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer won his first training title at Golden Gate Fields and went on to win 32 in a row.

“It was a special place in my heart for a long time," he told Horse Racing Nation on Monday. "So I'm sorry to hear about them closing. It takes a lot of jobs and puts a lot of people out of work unless they can uproot and go somewhere else.”

A good example of a trainer who will have to uproot is Steve Sherman, who grew up in the Bay Area and has been based at Golden Gate Fields for years. He said he stables anywhere from 30 to 45 horses at the track year-round, except for a break when he goes to Pleasanton.

“I’m still in shock,” he told HRN on Monday.

"Guys like me, there's going to be a bunch of us that are hit hard," Sherman said. “But I haven't had really a chance to talk to anybody. The tracks are closed on Mondays. I found out when I was at a birthday party yesterday. So I was just caught off guard. I didn't have any idea.

"They just put a new roof on my barn," he said. "So the last thing I would have thought is that this would have happened. I was just kind of in shock. You hear rumbles. I personally thought it would at least go a couple, three more years. You're always hearing different things, but I never would have thought it was this year."

Sherman hasn’t been able to give much thought to what arrangements he’ll make. He has a family trip planned for early August to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where California Chrome will be enshrined in the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. The Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner and two-time horse of the year was trained by Sherman’s father, Art.

"I guess when I get back from that, I'll kind of start dissecting things and kind of figure out, talk to owners and just kind of figure out. I know what they want us to do. They want us to go to L.A."

Indeed, The Stronach Group said in its announcement that it would work to "seamlessly" transition horses from Northern California to Southern California. And it said its goal is to increase field sizes and add another race day to the weekly calendar at Santa Anita.

"But it's not going to be easy down there," Sherman said. "Your horses are probably worth, a lot of them, half of what they are now if you go down there. That's a much tougher circuit. I don't know why they think that the guys from here would help them so much down there. Because, I think out of 1,000 horses here – and there's probably more than that, but I'll say 1,000 – maybe 200, maybe 300 might make it down there. So you're going have 700 or 800 horses that don't belong down there. So I don't really get what they're thinking."

Another complicating factor, he said, is that "the West Coast is a bit of an island. There's not a lot to choose from, like the East Coast. If you're in Kentucky, you could run at four or five different racetracks, maybe even more than that, maybe eight different racetracks."

Seattle isn’t a good option, he said, because it's not open in the winter. Phoenix isn’t a good choice either, he said, because "you never know what’s going to happen there."

As for his operation, Sherman said, "I'm not going to say I'm going to go to L.A., I'm not going to say I'm not going to go to L.A. But as of right now, I have no intentions to go to L.A. Zero."