Over Stronach objection, Calif. board OKs fall meet in north

Amid plenty of financial questions and a threat by the Stronach Group to close Santa Anita, the California Horse Racing Board voted 6-0 on Thursday to create a new, 26-day fall schedule at Pleasanton to fill part of the void being left by the June closing of Golden Gate Fields.

Meeting in front of what one board member said was a crowd of more than 250 people, the CHRB committed to a meet at the Alameda County Fair racetrack that would run Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from Oct. 19 through Dec. 15.

The approval came with the added call for the administrators of the new meet to fill in a lot of blanks before being granted a final license in August.

A Tuesday letter from Stronach executive Craig Fravel to the CHRB became a lightning rod during the more than 3 1/2-hour meeting at Cal Expo in Sacramento. What one of the 27 public commenters called a “ransom letter” Thursday threatened “an analysis of alternative uses for Santa Anita and San Luis Rey will be undertaken in short order” if the NorCal proposal were to be passed.

“It was not intended to be a threat. We have to make very difficult decisions,” Fravel said, drawing howls and jeers with his declaration.

“You want to be the bully and take the ball and run,” CHRB member Damascus Castellanos told Fravel. “Don’t put that burden on us. ... It comes across as ‘I’m going to take my ball and leave.’ That’s not cool. ... Your letter, to me, was crap. It shouldn’t have been done. But that’s the way you chose to play the game.”

Board member Wendy Mitchell called out Stronach’s criticism of the lack of purse funding in the just-passed proposal, especially when it was laid against the absence of its own details of threatened purse reductions in Southern California if the new NorCal meet were approved.

“I’m shocked you don’t know what the purse calculations are going to be,” she said. “You send out a letter. ... You should have come up with receipts.” She also said Stronach’s $4 million overpayment of purses that is being offset with cuts this winter was “a mess-up on your end.”

CHRB member Thomas Hudnut defended what Fravel wrote, saying, “I take your letter not totally as a threat. I see it as possible reality” about the money-losing economics of California racing.

Del Mar president Josh Rubinstein, who sided with the Stronach Group in urging the CHRB to deny new north-state meet, said, “There are $20 million in administrative costs a year. The south is responsible for over 80 percent of those costs. ... That just simply is no longer sustainable.”

In the midst of the criticism of his letter, Fravel insisted the plug would not be pulled on Santa Anita.

“The letter didn’t say we’re shutting down,” he said. “The letter said we have to figure it out. … Belinda (Stronach) does not want to close Santa Anita. ... The commitment is to make racing thrive at Santa Anita. No one in this room wants racing to survive more than I do. I’ve made a life out of it.”

Operating under the name Golden State Racing for the purposes of the new fall meet, the California Association of Racing Fairs came under pointed questioning over how it plans to pay for the meet and the costs that go with it. Expanded marketing, backstretch housing, new horse stalls, groundwater maintenance and even the future of an infield golf course if a $7 million turf track were to be built next year all came up.

“I’m not comfortable not knowing details and costs,” Castellanos said. “You have a lot of details. We need to know more of the details and the costs. ... By now you should know that.”

Chief executive officer Jerome Hoban said his Alameda County Fair was extending a $4 million line of credit to Golden State Racing to help meet some of the added costs of the new meet.

“I don’t want taxpayers being in a position of who’s going to be responsible for this,” Mitchell said, noting the fairs are operated by the state.

Conversely, leaders of the California Thoroughbred Trainers and California Thoroughbred Breeders Association said their boards voted unanimously to endorse the NorCal plan.

“Without racing in Northern California, there is very little incentive for California breeders to keep breeding,” CTT’s Alan Balch said.

Answering concerns about where to house stable workers, CHRB vice chair Óscar Gonzales bluntly said, “If there is no racing, backside workers will have no place to go.”

Gonzales also took offense that the Northern California effort faced what he felt was heavy-handed scrutiny.

“I have never seen the kind of questions leveled at any other racetrack until now,” he said, then referring to the CHRB response to the San Luis Rey Downs fire in December 2017. “This is a commission that gave a free pass to a (Stronach) facility that suffered a catastrophic fire. Now we’re on high alert for these technicalities (in Northern California).”

Even with all those questions, the board voted to take a chance on the NorCal effort to replace Golden Gate Fields, which Stronach is closing after a final day of racing June 9.

CHRB chair Dr. Greg Ferraro might have put it best when he opened the meeting saying, “No matter what decision we make, we’ve got half the state mad at us.”

Board member Dennis Alfieri did not vote because he had to leave the meeting early.

Horse Racing Nation monitored the meeting via a live audio link provided by the CHRB on its website.