LOS ALAMITOS : Harness Meeting to Run 124 Nights

Trucks are removing dirt from the Los Alamitos track this week, signaling the end of the quarter horse meeting and the return of harness racing Friday.

Rarely has there been a better spirit of cooperation between the two breeds’ factions or more optimism that even better times lie ahead.

Glasnost between the once-feuding rivals has become one of the significant developments in Southern California racing during the past year. The camps may still eye one another warily, but each understands the necessity and benefit of unity.

Harness executives Lloyd Arnold and Chris Bardis bought Los Alamitos and adjacent property for $71 million from the Hollywood Park Operating Co. a year and a half ago, and last year sold half of the track to quarter horse executive Ed Allred for $16.5 million. A symbiotic relationship has ensued.

Because of this new coalition, harness and quarter-horse leaders were able to flip-flop 1991 dates at a California Horse Racing Board meeting last month. This is enabling the harness meet to extend 124 nights through July 27, and the quarter horses to return on Aug. 20 for a meet of similar length through January.

“This is something Lloyd and I have been discussing for some time, and it will be better for both breeds,” Allred said. “It would have been difficult for us to start a meet for nine weeks next December. And the short harness meet starting next week would have been a disaster as well.”

The harness meeting would have ended on April 13 before the exchange of dates.

Arnold said: “It’s a major step that we’ve got six months, and it’s a major step that we and the quarter horse people agreed on the dates. Our biggest problem is that the decision was not in time to get us a lot of stables. People from other parts of the country are already committed. If we’d known two months earlier, we would have gotten a lot more.

“One of the biggest problems with a short meet was the public was never here long enough at one time to get familiar with the horses. Now, they’ll be able to follow them for six months.

“This is the first step toward year-round racing in California for harness and quarters. If we don’t make it big, shame on us. If the horsemen don’t make money this meet, shame on them.”

Arnold admits he still has a giant hole to fill in the calendar after July but is confident he made the right move by putting together the longest meet in track history and buying time to deal with the autumn dates.

“Fairplex (in Pomona) is out,” Arnold said. “But there are still a few other places to explore--Northern California, Del Mar, Hollywood Park. If we can get another four or five months somewhere in California, we won’t have enough stalls for the people.”

The Los Alamitos harness meet last winter was up 24% in handle and 28% in attendance. The recently concluded quarter horse session was up 10.5% in handle--a $1,086,994 nightly average--and 6% in attendance.

“I’m elated about everything with the strong meet,” Allred said. “We’re coming out of the doldrums. And I’m happy with developments across town.”

Allred referred to the naming of R.D. Hubbard as chairman of the board at Hollywood Park, replacing Marje Everett. Hubbard, a close associate of Allred, owns tracks in New Mexico and Kansas and is expected to be receptive to quarter horse dates at the Inglewood track in 1992.

One of Hubbard’s proposed changes is to return Hollywood Park to a mile oval instead of its current 1 1/8-mile configuration. Everett’s ouster and the return to a mile also raise the hopes of harness horsemen, who have not been able to race there since 1984.

Harness racing at Hollywood Park remains only a possibility. “The harness people have a greater problem finding another place than we do because their surface is inconsistent with the thoroughbreds,” Allred said. “And Hollywood Park is used as a thoroughbred training center when it isn’t racing.”

Arnold looks forward to a successful harness meet at Los Alamitos for several reasons. “In addition to 22 off-track sites in California, we’ll be simulcasting for the first time to 18 sites in Nevada, four in Wyoming and to Idaho, and we’ll have commingled pools for the first time,” he said. “We’re pushing for simulcasting with Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, and we’re looking at Washington, Alaska and Hawaii down the road.

“We’ll have use of the new grandstand paddock, which was completed the last week of the fall meet. That should cut our time between races by three minutes, from 17 or 18 to 14 or 15. The last race should be over by 10:30 on weeknights and 11:45 on weekends.

“We’ll have trifecta wagering as soon as the approved bill gets out of the Office of Administrative Law, probably in mid-April. That should put the handle up 10% to 15%. It has everywhere else.”

Fans will be able to select the 1-2-3 finishers in order on one race each night in the one-year trifecta experiment.

While harness fans enjoy the warmer summer nights previously reserved for the quarter horses, Allred is confident that a quarter horse meet at Bay Meadows from May 17 to July 20 will also do well.

“We lost $800,000 racing from February to April there last year, and we’ll come much closer to breaking even,” Allred said. “We’re going at a much better time of the year as far as the weather (goes). I’ve spoken with James Conn, the GM there, and there is much better cooperation with management. It’s a much better stabling situation.

“We’re also looking into a bill to get simulcast betting from Bay Meadows to Los Alamitos. We had such a good meet, we were underpaid about $365,000 in purses. We would transfer that to Bay Meadows, guaranteeing $32,000 a day in overnight purses, which would make history up there.”

Allred then emphasized one point: “This is only a one-year experiment.”

With the changing of the guard at Hollywood Park, it may be a whole new ballgame for dates in 1992.

Los Alamitos Notes

It was a familiar story on closing weekend for Pete Parrella, co-owner of stakes winners Apprehend in the $100,000 HQHRA Championship and Griswold in the $50,000 Bull Rastus Handicap, the latter in world-record time. On Dec. 7, he saw Apprehend win the Governor’s Cup Derby the same night as Griswold set the 870-yard world record he would later break. “We won a third race that night, and that was probably a little more thrilling because it all happened in one night,” Parrella said.

Griswold, 5, and Apprehend, 4, are full brothers. Parrella and co-owner Jerry Moreland also have a 3-year-old full sister, Romanticism, and a yearling full brother who will be sold at the Heritage Sale. . . . “I’m beginning to think Griswold can go even faster than 43.99 (seconds),” trainer Dan Francisco said after he lowered his 870-yard world record, while carrying 125 pounds, in the Bull Rastus. “He keeps goofing off coming down the lane. I’m sure glad I’m training him and not chasing him. We’ll give him some time off until Bay Meadows and also check into possibilities at Oklahoma City.”

Trainer Daryn Charlton was equally happy over Apprehend’s HQHRA victory. “This horse loves the outside,” said Charlton, from under a trademark black Stetson after Apprehend won from Post No. 10. “And he left like a bullet tonight.” Charlton said both Apprehend and fourth-place finisher Jazzing Hi would be rested for several months and be pointed for the Vessels Maturity this fall.

When Rio Hondo won the California Gold Rush Handicap in 1:32 2/5, a track record for arabians at seven furlongs, it marked the ninth track mark of the meet--five by arabians, two by appaloosas and two by quarter horses.