Flatter: Let’s enjoy the Del Mar summer while we still can

For the next eight weeks, California racing gets to check its troubles at the door outside the junction of turf and surf. It is time to get stuck in traffic on I-5, remember to use all the lanes of the Via de la Valle off ramp, find room in the parking lot, snap a smile on every face and return to old Del Mar.

Enjoy it while we can, because its days may be numbered.

It all looks good to the thousands of outsiders who will pour into the joint for the traditional opener at 2 o’clock local time Friday afternoon. The current clubhouse, which is 34 years old, has aged well. The ocean and nearby hillside that form the backdrop are thousands of years older and have aged even better.

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Patrons’ engines will be well-oiled by $7.50 beers and $14 cocktails, the better to fuel about $24 million in wagers on 100 horses in 10 races. The figures look downright exceptional.

And that is the problem. It is the exception. The other 44 weeks of the year, California is treading its racing water.

It is not unlike the rest of the country. The Jockey Club says the state’s foal crop was 1,196 in 2023, the most recent year the equine census was fully reported. That is down nearly 70% in 20 years. The number of races run in 2024 was 2,644, about half what it was two decades earlier. With inflation factored in, the average purse has not budged in that time, and most of California’s graded stakes are run at minimums set by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.

Up north at Santa Anita, the numbers always seem to start and end at the value of the land and how much the Stronach family would stand to gain by selling it, lock, stock and stable. That ever-present bogeyman is portrayed as a faceless developer who would pay a figure ending with nine zeroes to make racing into a single zero.

For the record, Stronach’s 1/ST Racing has insisted steadfastly that it is invested in making the sport work at all its tracks, even as its matriarch uttered that infamous phrase about how “a very dense, urban setting (is) not great for horses.” The settings don’t get much more dense and urban than they do in the San Gabriel Valley.

Farther north, there used to be a ballpark for racehorses to play near San Francisco. And there were sandlots at county fairs in places like Pleasanton and Fresno and Santa Rosa and Ferndale and Sacramento. Now the only fairground left to host races is Del Mar.

For the uninitiated, yes, that jewel of a setting belongs to the California government’s agriculture department, which runs county fairs. It is the most tangible reason why the whole state simply cannot move racing to the San Diego area all year long.

The bigger problem for California racing is, what else, money. Or a lack of it. Golden Gate Fields closed last June because it made more financial sense for the Stronach Group to operate one colony at Santa Anita rather than spread a fading business thinly across two tracks on either end of the state. A worthy debate will rage over whether management tried hard enough to make both tracks work, but that is a moot point today.

Now there is a domino effect. California law says if there is no racing in the north, every simulcast dollar goes south. Since Southern California is the majority party in the body politic of the regulatory hierarchy, there is no momentum to prop up the racing fairs in the north state. So they are all gone this summer with fading hope that they can be resurrected next year or any year. It makes one wonder why the California Authority of Racing Fairs has had six board meetings in 2025.

That simulcast money grab will be beneficial to Santa Anita and Del Mar and Los Alamitos only in the shortest of terms. Without racing in the north, there are fewer opportunities for state-bred horses. And their owners. And especially their breeders. When money goes away, so do pregnant mares. Look no farther than Illinois for a glaring example.

It is a trickle-up reality. Fewer mares in foal mean fewer babies. And fewer horses of racing age. And fewer opportunities at the maiden and claiming levels. And fewer proving grounds to show talent in allowance and stakes company. And eventually, with a wafer-thin pool of worthy horse flesh, those added-money races are graded in name only.

As if this crumbling monolith could take any more rust, there also is the not-so-small matter that California racing has its hands tied when it comes to cultivating added revenue. It cannot lean on slot machines or casino games because native American tribes have a monopoly thanks to a ballot proposition approved by 64% of state voters in 2000. The idea of historic horse-racing machines has been floated, but so far it is a non-starter.

Somehow, with no money and no horses, Del Mar soldiers on every summer. Ship-and-win incentives help. So does the lure of weather, which is more reliable for turf racing than anywhere else in the country. Right, Saratoga?

So we shall enjoy seeing the ocean to the left and those white houses on the hill up ahead and the inviting sunshine while we are California dreaming this summer via video feeds or in person, hotel sticker shock notwithstanding.

It used to be that we could enjoy Del Mar five days a week. Now it is four. It feels a bit like it did all those years ago hanging out at the video store on a weeknight. Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about Blockbuster going away.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.