Ultimatum Presented by Arnold : Horse racing: He threatens to drop harness racing at Los Alamitos.

Lloyd Arnold, president and general manager of Los Alamitos Race Course, told a special subcommittee of the California Horse Racing Board on Friday that he will pull harness racing out of Los Alamitos if additional weeks of racing are not approved at Pomona’s Fairplex Park for 1991 and 1992.

Arnold, who appeared before the committee that recommends racing dates, said that if the CHRB does not approve 18 weeks of harness racing at Pomona, he will ask that the board rescind all his dates for 1991 and 1992 because the sport will not be viable in California.

“If you say we are not going to run at Pomona, then you are saying we should not run harness racing,” Arnold said. “Instead, we’re going to come back and apply for thoroughbred dates during that time. And if we have to build a mile track to do that, we will. We’ve already had architects and engineers out there looking.”

The special four-hour meeting in Burbank was punctuated by several interruptions and one harness trainer was asked to leave.

The harness interests say the sport will die without year-round racing in Southern California. The opposition comes mostly from Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, whose horsemen use Pomona as a training track. There are about 500 thoroughbreds at Pomona.

If Arnold’s demand is met, there will be daytime racing at the thoroughbred tracks overlapping racing of quarter horses at Los Alamitos and harness horses at Pomona during the evening.

Don Robbins, general manager at Hollywood Park, said the overlap racing would adversely affect the thoroughbred handle. He cited 1986, when three tracks ran on the same day. Hollywood’s fall meeting lost 15.5% in attendance and 14% in handle during that period, he said.

The harness interests contended that the average on-track handle at Hollywood Park dropped almost $600,000 between 1985 and 1987 and the average handle at Pomona was only $262,000, so that there were other forces besides overlap racing at work. Since then, satellite wagering has increased handles at all tracks.

The subcommittee members, Leslie Liscom, Henry Chavez and Rosemary Ferraro, all said they needed more time and would not offer a recommendation to the board. The full board of the CHRB will rule on Friday.