THOROUGHBRED RACING : Some Owners, Trainers Split on Role of Horsemen’s Assn.

A meeting of the California Horse Racing Board’s committee on night racing at Hollywood Park, held Thursday in El Segundo, emphasized a broader potential problem for the sport: A split between owners and trainers who share membership in the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn.

“The HBPA has failed to represent owners,” said Mace Siegel, who races a large stable based in California. “The HBPA is no longer benevolent, and it is not protective of my interests as an owner.”

In a full-page advertisement in Thursday’s Daily Racing Form, another horse owner and breeder, Ed Friendly, announced that he has resigned as a vice president of the CHBPA. The ad also said that Friendly won’t be running for reelection as a board member of the group.

Citing the CHBPA as “the only acknowledged organization representing horsemen,” Friendly’s ad also read: “In my view, the CHBPA is manipulated by a militant, vocal minority of trainers, some driven by personal vendettas. . . . Their views often conflict with most knowledgeable owners and many prestigious trainers.”

Friendly and Brian Sweeney, an owner, breeder and trainer and a CHBPA board member, exchanged barbs during Thursday’s 2 1/2-hour meeting before the three-member racing board committee that is considering a request from Hollywood Park to run 12 of its 14 Friday racing dates at night during the meeting that begins next April.

The committee, which will give its recommendation to the seven-member racing board today, is expected to approve the 12 nights, although it wasn’t made clear whether all of the races would be televised to Santa Anita, Los Alamitos and Fairplex Park for betting, or whether Los Alamitos’ quarter horse cards and the harness programs from Cal Expo at Sacramento would be piped into Hollywood Park while the evening thoroughbred races are being run.

Siegel said Thursday that he and Friendly have resigned from the CHBPA’s purse committee, which negotiates the value of races with the tracks.

“Whatever the committee did still had to be approved by the HBPA board,” Siegel said. “So it really didn’t make much difference what the committee did.”

One of Friendly’s objections is that of 11 officers and directors of the CHBPA board, only three are “pure” owners--Friendly, John Valpredo and Samantha Siegel, who is Mace Siegel’s daughter.

“A ‘pure’ owner--I don’t know what the hell that means,” Sweeney said. “All I know is that I’m the owner, breeder and trainer of 25 horses at great expense.”

Sweeney is one of the “vocal minority of trainers” that Friendly cited in his ad. After Thursday’s meeting, Sweeney said: “Ed Friendly is a snob, and his elitist ad in the Form proves it.”

There are 10 spots on the CHBPA’s board. Sweeney said that the board is being restructured, and at an election early next year there will be nine seats apiece for owners and trainers.

Sweeney accused Hollywood Park’s management of trying to divide the CHBPA in the interest of gaining operational concessions.

“This is a tactic that you might see at some gyp joint (small track),” Sweeney said. “R.D. Hubbard romanced the horsemen when he took over at Hollywood (in February of 1991). He told them he was against night racing (which had begun during the Marje Everett regime with one evening card in 1988), but now he’s changed his opinion. Hollywood Park works in uncompromising ways. They won’t bend one inch. They want to do it their way.”

One of the reasons Hollywood Park has pushed for Friday night racing is to expose new fans to the sport.

Besides Friendly and Siegel, several other owners cited the advantages of racing on Friday nights.

“Mr. Sweeney says he has 25 horses,” Alan Landsburg said. “Well I can tell you that I am involved in about three times that. I’ve been in racing for 15 long and expensive years, and each year it gets more expensive. I jump with delight when you hold out to me the chance to run my horses for more purse money, which Friday nights expect to bring.”

Friendly, a retired television producer whose credits include “Laugh-In” and “Little House on the Prairie,” compared racing to show business:

“There would be meetings where the writer would say he didn’t want a word changed, and the director wanted to make some changes, and that’s when the producer would have to step in and say, ‘We’ll do it this way.’ In racing, the trainer is hired to train the horses, not tell the owner how the business is run. I had a horse yesterday that I wanted to work six furlongs. The trainer only wanted him to work four furlongs. So the horse worked four furlongs. But I don’t want the trainer telling me to do things that affect my own pocketbook.”

Representatives of the quarter horse and harness industries said that they are more troubled by the economy than by the thoroughbred sector and shouldn’t be perceived as threats to the thoroughbreds.

“This is the California Horse Racing Board, not the California Thoroughbred Board,” said Ralph Scurfield, chairman of the racing board. “I’m ashamed of those people who don’t want to give the third parties (quarter and harness horses) a chance.”

Horse Racing Notes

James C. Watson, 40, of Newport Beach, has been named a member of the California Horse Racing Board by Gov. Pete Wilson. Watson’s appointment fills a vacancy caused by the expiration of Henry Chavez’s term earlier this year. Watson is president of Koll International Commercial, a development company. He was associated with the Newport Beach group that unsuccessfully tried to buy Los Alamitos several years ago and is a former officer of the Santa Anita Development Corp., which was a subsidiary of the Santa Anita Operating Co.

Creaking Board, winner of the Miesque Stakes on grass at Hollywood Park on Nov. 28, is one of three supplementary entries for Saturday’s $250,000 Starlet, a 1 1/16-mile dirt race. Also paying the supplementary fee of $12,500 are the owners of Zoonaqua and Turkstand. Passing Vice, Fit To Lead, Lily La Belle, Nijivision, Blue Moonlight and Madame L’Enjoleur round out the nine-horse field of 2-year-old fillies. Trainer Brian Mayberry’s three starters--Zoonaqua, Lily La Belle and Blue Moonlight--will run uncoupled because they have different owners.