HORSE RACING : CHRB’s Harness Vote Untimely for Sauer

When the California Horse Racing Board voted unamimously against a fall harness racing meet at Fairplex in Pomona, the harness community was set on its collective ear. Drivers, trainers and owners gasped in disbelief when they heard the news. Harness’ year-round schedule and the stability it was promising was gone. The seven men and women which comprise the CHRB disrupted the livelihoods of the thousands of people who either work at or are related to harness workers at Los Alamitos. But maybe no one’s world has been turned upside down more than driver/groom Todd Sauer’s.

Sauer, 30, is a groom for the Robert Johnson Stable and has been working around the California harness circuit since he was 11 years old. On Sept. 8, Sauer’s responsibilities increased by one when his wife, Audrey, gave birth to the couple’s third child, Joseph, in Sacramento.

Two days later, as the Sauers waited for the newest member of their family to be released from the hospital, cardiologists told the couple that the baby had a birth defect in its heart and would require emergency surgery if he was to survive.

With only five days experience, the youngest Sauer underwent open-heart surgery at the Stanford University hospital to repair a hole in his heart and to insert a valve into the right ventricle.

Joseph survived the surgery, and Sauer survived the ordeal and came back to work just in time to find out that on Oct. 20 when the season ends at Los Alamitos he’ll be among the many looking for work and a place to live.

Sauer is currently living in a tackroom at the track, while his wife and three kids live in a motel in Sacramento.

“This is a big setback,” Sauer said of losing the Fairplex racing dates. “I was planning on driving at Pomona. That’s the only reason I came back, otherwise I would have stayed up with the baby.

“If I had a good meet and if I drove well, maybe I would have been able to drive here in February. Now it looks like I’ve got no shot.”

Sauer had planned on trying to find an inexpensive home to rent in the Pomona area and move his family down when the baby is able to be moved. For now, those plans have been dashed.

“I figured I’d bring them down here and settle in. I figured we’d be racing down here. We’ve been living out of motels and tack rooms so long, I was hoping to rent a house or something.”

There are other options, but with harness racing on the improve in California, Sauer and many others hadn’t really given them much thought.

“Bobby (Johnson) has three horses that could go to Chicago, and I might be able to drive there,” Sauer said of one of his options. “But I don’t want to be that far away from my family, and I can’t afford to take them.”

Johnson also has some yearlings that he’s offered to let Sauer break at Del Mar, but it’s not certain yet that the CHRB is going to allow the harness people to use Del Mar as a training facility. A CHRB meeting has been called for Oct. 19, and the use of Del Mar is a subject that is scheduled to be discussed.

Now hoping for a Del Mar training site, Sauer says he’ll go back to Sacramento for a few weeks when the season ends.

“I guess I’ll go up and spend a few weeks with my family,” Sauer said, sitting on a tack box in front of the stall that is home to his favorite horse, Vance Lobell. “Then if Bobby still needs me, I’ll go down to Del Mar and keep working. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’d do. I’ve been working for Bobby for 10 years. I’d hate to leave, it’s kind of like home. I don’t even know where I’d begin to look.

“It’s been rough the last few years, but there’s always been somewhere to go. Even in winter training you might take a pay cut, but at least you got a check.”

And finally when many in the harness business had thought that the industry had made the final turn and was headed for home and toward some semblance of stability, the security blanket on which they’ve counted on for protection has been yanked from under their feet.

“Finally, you think you’re going good, and getting ahead,” Sauer said dejectedly. “...Then something drags you backward.”

For some of the bigger trainers and owners, the wait until February racing will be an inconvenience that they will have to deal with, but they worry about the people who work for them, like the Todd Sauers, for whom the next three months will not be an inconvenience -- but a matter of survival.