Santa Anita has changes in the works to boost field size

With the average field size at Santa Anita down more than one starter per race from a year ago, business has understandably taken a hit at “The Great Race Place.”

Through the first 24 days of the current winter-spring meet, Santa Anita has averaged 6.91 starters per race. At this time last year, Santa Anita was averaging 8.0 starters per race. The result? A 9.0 percent reduction in total handle to $203,022,626 from $224,733,378 during the same time frame of a year ago.

The handle decline has led Santa Anita’s share of the overall wagering market to dip to 20.5 percent from 21.8 percent last season.

“It’s not good and no one is happy about it,” said Aidan Butler, chief operating officer of Santa Anita’s parent company 1/ST. “Are we well aware of it? I’m more aware of it than anything else in my life at the moment.”

To help address the paltry field size at Santa Anita, steps being taken include tweaks to the condition book, which will begin with the conclusion of Book 4 on March 6. Among the adjustments is Santa Anita will no longer offer maiden races for straight 3-year-olds. All races for non-winners will be for 3-year-olds and up.

But what Santa Anita director of racing Chris Merz called the “biggest change,” the condition book will revert back to two-week intervals after being written in three-week increments this meet.

“That is something that worked well for us last year and we'll go back to that,” Merz said. “Hopefully, we will have the same kind of success as last year.”

Merz went on to explain the potential positives for reverting to a two-week book. 

“With the three-week book, horsemen and owners get a lot more to see and to choose from. At that point, they get to kind of cherry pick their spot,” Merz said, also noting as books were released, races could be known up to five weeks in advance. “Coming out of the mid-Atlantic, when they have those opportunities they are going to start cherry picking. That's what I think has kind of happened here."

[Related: Santa Anita and Gulfstream have big plans for blockbuster cards March 5]

Santa Anita also plans to run as many turf races as its course will allow. Merz said they are already running about 50 percent of races on grass.

“We’re adjusting the best we can and that could mean even more opportunities on turf,” Merz said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a 180-foot wide turf course I can utilize to give bettors the bigger fields. We make do what we can.”

Then there is the Bob Baffert factor at Santa Anita. Specifically, his absolute domination of Southern California dirt racing. While neither Butler nor Merz wanted to cite Baffert, it was clear who they were referencing when discussing the dynamics of dirt racing at Santa Anita.

Said Butler: “When it comes to dirt horses, we have some of the best dirt horses in the world. Absolute rock stars. But the issue with having such a difference in the quality of stock is the inventory gets spread out because it’s harder to compete.

“This makes it very difficult from a racing office perspective to fill races when there are horses in there, some of the most expensive horses in the world, that you really don’t want to run against,” Butler continued. “You can read between the lines, but that’s no one’s fault. It just doesn’t make it simple from a race programming standpoint.”

Merz added that this dynamic has led many owners and trainers in Southern California to shift their priority to grass horses. Butler roughly estimated Santa Anita, which has received an influx of Europeans in recent years, has 70 percent turf horses on its backstretch.

“Right now we’re a little more than 50 percent turf and that’s mostly a result of changes over the last 10 years or so," Mertz said. "These owners and trainers that were buying dirt horses before, now they have switched to turf. There are a number of reasons for that, but I think the owners and trainers out here just feel they have a better opportunity on turf than dirt.”

As for the horse inventory in Southern California, Merz indicated it has not been a major factor in the shrinking field sizes. He said inventory is at its typical level in Southern California with approximately 2,180 horses currently stabled between Santa Anita, Los Alamitos and San Luis Rey Downs training center.

Merz, who took over as racing secretary at Santa Anita in November 2020, acknowledged the lack of results at the entry box this season has been “frustrating.

“(Racing coordinator) Jason Egan is kind of my right-hand guy out here, he’s got a couch in the office and he plays therapist for me,” Merz said. “It’s frustrating because you walk in and you’re thinking you have a race that will fill easily. For example, like a $10,000 claimer going long on the dirt. You don’t think twice about filling a race like that. Then here we are at 3 o’clock in the afternoon trying to hustle horses. It gets frustrating.”

For now, Santa Anita will make the aforementioned changes and see what comes of it.

“We’re having daily conversations about things we can do to help with this,” Butler said. “There are some adjustments that need to be made, but no one is panicking.”