Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Owner Says Santa Anita ‘Is Not a Safe Track’

In Kentucky, the people at Churchill Downs and some breeders are upset that the Breeders’ Cup, after having been promised to their state, is coming back to California in 1987.

Aaron Jones, however, was upset even before the Breeders’ Cup board announced this week that California would be the site of its $10-million set of seven races for the third time in the first four years. The series began at Hollywood Park last year, continued at New York’s Aqueduct this year, is scheduled for Santa Anita in ’86 and will return to California, track unspecified, in ’87.

Jones, a Eugene, Ore., lumberman who breeds and races good horses, was opposed to Santa Anita’s getting the Breeders’ Cup in ’86 and resigned from the board of directors a month ago rather than join the majority, who favored the Arcadia track over Hollywood Park.

“Santa Anita is not a safe track,” Jones said. “It gets like concrete and breaks down too many horses. Of the horses I’ve had that have gone wrong, 90% have come at Santa Anita. If it rains before the Breeders’ Cup next year, Santa Anita can be a dangerous track.”

Jones also said that he won’t run any of his horses in the Breeders’ Cup next year “if the Santa Anita track is the same then as it is now. I won’t send my horses out there and slaughter them.”

This is not the first time Santa Anita’s racing strip has been criticized. In 1983, owner Fred Sahadi, who raced the stakes-winning Desert Wine, questioned the safety of the track, as did trainer John Russell and others. Ron Moore, the track superintendent, then took a leave of absence and later relinquished the job.

This year, some trainers, Bobby Frankel and Gary Jones among them, have trained their horses at Hollywood Park and then taken them to Santa Anita on race days.

Two years ago, Santa Anita, reportedly spending more than $1 million, reconstructed its dirt track and rebuilt the turf course.

Jones doesn’t believe that the improvements have done much good. “Once, I tried to stick a knife into the main track and I couldn’t do it,” he said. “One trainer said that he lost horses valued at $20 million because of injuries at Santa Anita last year.”

Alan Balch, an assistant general manager at Santa Anita, said he was aware of Jones’ criticism.

“Aaron has had a lot of bad luck with his horses and he attributes it to the track,” Balch said. “All I can say is that if there were a perfect race track, everybody would have one like it.

“At Santa Anita, we’re as scientific as anybody about the way we try to maintain our track. We do have a drying-out problem, but we’re constantly trying to solve it. This weekend, Joe King, who is superintendent of the New York tracks, is coming in to advise us, and we also use a soil expert as a consultant.”

Balch pointed out that serious breakdowns happen everywhere. “Look at the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Aqueduct this year,” he said. “That good Canadian horse (Imperial Choice, later named Canada’s Horse of the Year) cracked a bone in his leg. A few years ago, Timely Writer went down at Belmont Park and had to be destroyed.”

Some members of the Breeders’ Cup board were concerned about Santa Anita’s track, and according to Jones, one of the delays in the signing of a contract for the ’86 races was a safety guarantee from the track.

Another source, asking that he not be named, said that the Breeders’ Cup once indicated that it would not assign its races to Santa Anita if the California horsemen considered the racing strip hazardous. At the time, however, a veterinarian’s study of Santa Anita and Hollywood Park indicated that there was little difference in the incidence of breakdowns at the tracks.

“Hollywood Park has had problems with its track, too,” Jones said. “But they’ve kept rebuilding it until now they’ve got the safest track in the United States.”

After starting with a modest investment of about $100,000 at the Keeneland sales in 1971, Jones this year spent almost $5 million to obtain lifetime breeding shares in the stallions Danzig and Alydar. One of his reasons for investing in those stallions is his disappointment in Bold Forbes, the 1976 Kentucky Derby winner whom Jones bought after the race for breeding purposes.

Jones’ big winners on the track have been Miss Musket, Linda’s Chief and Lemhi Gold.

“I hang around the barn a lot and get to know my horses,” Jones said. “I don’t want to destroy the reputations of their sires by running them on unsafe race tracks.”

A thoroughbred race worth $1-million and a quarter horse race valued at $831,800 will be run in the Southland this weekend.

The thoroughbred race is the Hollywood Futurity Sunday at Hollywood Park; the quarter horse event is the Golden State Futurity Friday night at Los Alamitos.

The Hollywood Futurity has no bearing on the 2-year-old colt championship, since neither Tasso, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Stakes, nor Ogygian, undefeated before being sidelined by a shin injury, is competing. But if trainer Wayne Lukas starts his two fillies, Twilight Ridge and Family Style, either could lock up the 2-year-old distaff title with a win over the colts.

Other probable starters in the Hollywood Futurity include Scat Dancer, third behind Tasso and Storm Cat in the Breeders’ Cup; undefeated Judge Smells; Mustin Lake, winner of the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs in his last start, and Darby Fair and Snow Chief, the Mel Stute trainees who ran 1-2 in the Hoist the Flag Stakes at Hollywood Nov. 29.

Heading the 10-horse field in the Golden State Futurity are Regal Rumor and Brazen Britches, both trained by Blane Schvaneveldt. He also has two starters, Cash Rate and Miss Jet Tonto, running in Saturday night’s $200,000 Champion of Champions race, which could determine the World Championship, quarter horse racing’s equivalent of Horse of the Year.

Dashs Dream is favored to win the Champion of Champions and the World Championship for the second straight year.

Racing Notes Au Bon Marche, the California-owned 2-year-old who was scratched from the Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct Nov. 23, will run Saturday in the Nashua Stakes in New York. “The colt was reshod the morning of the Remsen, and by 3 that afternoon, he couldn’t walk,” said Jack Liebau, the Los Angeles attorney who is one of Au Bon Marche’s owners. “We were going to bring him back to California after that race, but since he didn’t run, we decided to keep him there for the Nashua.” Au Bon Marche, at 83-1, finished fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and earned $50,000. . . . Trainer Julio Canani has started 12 horses at Hollywood Park this season, winning with five and adding one second and five thirds. . . . With no outstanding apprentice jockeys this year, the Eclipse Award may go to Arthur Madrid Jr. Madrid, currently riding at the Meadowlands, leads the nation’s apprentices in wins with about 140.