HORSE RACING : Arnold Will Reach Finish Line Saturday Night at Los Alamitos

Lloyd Arnold has been in harness racing for about 50 years. Arnold is 63 now, and what he did when he was 11 should count. In 1940, Arnold and his father bought a standardbred mare for $75.

“Doesn’t sound like a lot,” Arnold said the other day, “but we had a tough time raising the money.”

In his native Iowa, Arnold raced that mare for purses that included roosters and pigs. It was the start of a fascination with a sport that has never waned, even though the Arnold era in California apparently will end Saturday night at Los Alamitos.

Arnold has come and gone and come again in a variety of ventures. Is the door still open for his return as a track operator?

“That word never covers a long time,” he said. “But for now I have no plans to get back in.”

A tentative deal has been made for two harness horsemen to manage the dates at Los Alamitos next year. Arnold still owns Los Alamitos with his quarter horse partner, Ed Allred, the result of a deal that began with Hollywood Park selling the 297 acres in Orange County for $71 million in 1989.

Arnold began running California harness meetings in Sacramento in 1975, and he operated meets at Los Alamitos from 1978 until 1983, but he announced in late September that he was stepping aside when the season ends Saturday.

Between grandchildren and horses and an occasional round of golf, Arnold will still be busy. The totals are four grandchildren, 50 horses in training and 10 broodmares in foal. Lloyd and Nancy Arnold, who has been the family bookkeeper through many of the years, will continue to live in Seal Beach.

In the beginning, Lloyd Arnold was able to plunge into racing as an owner because of his success as a cattleman, and later as an upstart commodities trader in Chicago. He bought and sold hogs and pork bellies with an expert’s flair. In 1968, when the Chicago Union Stockyards needed a new home, Arnold sold it his farm market in Atkinson, Ill.

Before pork bellies, Arnold ran cattle auctions in Iowa and Colorado. He was his own auctioneer, with an encyclopedic grasp of the stock, the bidders and what the market would bear.

In racing, Arnold and his partners recovered from the fire at Maywood Park in suburban Chicago in 1959. Their stable was wiped out, but Arnold was back in the game soon afterward, hooking up with the brothers Farrington--Arnold, Dick and Bob--in Chicago. With Bob Farrington driving most of the time, the millions that Arnold spent on yearlings paid off.

As one of Chicago’s most influential owners, Arnold worked the opposite side of the street from the track operators. He was successful in implementing insurance programs for horsemen, battled managements for larger purses and pushed for backstretch improvements.

Arnold didn’t lose sight of those things upon his arrival in California as a track operator. At Los Alamitos, drivers with shady reputations were not welcome, nor were inexperienced horsemen.

As he leaves, Arnold is proudest of the blows he says he has struck for racing integrity.

Most frustrating was his inability to sustain a year-round circuit for harness horsemen in California.

“We’ve succeeded, I would say, to the extent that we’ve kept the night (parimutuel) industry alive,” Arnold said. “I said when we came in that if we got the horses, we ought to be able to survive. But only Hollywood Park, years ago, has been able to get a lot of harness horses to come out from the East, and they did it because there was no year-round (thoroughbred) racing at the time.”

Land and the creatures that live on it have always been important to Arnold. He will continue to be involved in the land-development business in Sacramento.

“Shoot,” Lloyd Arnold said. “I’m not retired. I’m just retired from running a track, that’s all.”

Altazarr drew the outside post in an eight-horse field for Saturday’s $100,000 Hollywood Prevue Breeders’ Cup Stakes.

Altazarr, trained by Brian Mayberry and owned by Jerry and Ann Moss, will be coupled in the betting with Dr. Bryan. Others running are Codified, Cold Touch, Zuno Warrior, Wheeler Oil, Denmars Dream and Stuka. Altazarr, who was fourth in the Balboa Stakes at Del Mar in his last start, will carry 121 pounds, three more than Wheeler Oil and Cold Touch.

Mayberry said Thursday that Blue Moonlight, winner of the opening-day Moccasin Stakes at Hollywood, will be prepared to run in the $250,000 Hollywood Starlet on Dec. 19. Zoonaqua, another 2-year-old filly in the Mayberry barn, is expected to run in the $250,000 Miesque Stakes on Nov. 28.

The dismissal of Lenny Hale as senior vice president for racing may be only the beginning of a shake-up at the New York tracks. Gov. Mario Cuomo has been taking a hard look at the salary structure of executives at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga and feels that some of them are overpaid for a nonprofit racing agency that is responsible to the state.

According to Cuomo, the highest-paid New York racing official, Jerry McKeon, made $261,000 in 1990. This is comparable to what some racing executives earn at privately financed tracks in California.

Hale, 47, has been associated with New York racing for 17 years. Dozens of trainers unsuccessfully petitioned track management to retain him.

Since 1982, when The Times began its Triple Crown Ratings, Hale has been a member of the panel that assesses the country’s top 3-year-olds on a weekly basis.

Horse Racing Notes

Joe Harper, president of Del Mar, said that his track has asked the Breeders’ Cup that it be considered as a site for the million-dollar races. The seven stakes will be run at Santa Anita next year, the first time they will be contested at a California track since Hollywood Park was the host in 1987. Tracks reportedly favored for hosting the Breeders’ Cup in 1994 are Belmont Park and Woodbine.

Hollywood Park’s races will be piped into Nevada again starting today, after the track reached an agreement Thursday with the race books and the disseminating company that handles the satellite signal. Nevada handles an average of about $500,000 a day on the Hollywood races. . . . Olympio, winner of the Hollywood Prevue in 1990, has been sidelined most of this year, but trainer Ron McAnally said that he is due to return to the races soon. . . . Minks Law, a 2-year-old gelding whose only win in six starts came at Fairplex Park in September, won Thursday’s feature at Hollywood, with the favorite, Bagdad Road, finishing second.