HOLLYWOOD PARK : Friday Night Racing Approved

The California Horse Racing Board’s approval of 12 Friday night racing dates at Hollywood Park for next year will not end the long-running feud between the track and the trainers.

In fact, the acrimony is escalating.

At Friday’s racing board meeting, the divisiveness in the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. continued with the announcement that some horse owners were resigning from the CHBPA to form their own group. Reacting to this, Brian Sweeney, a board member of the CHBPA, suggested that Hollywood Park and its chairman, R.D. Hubbard, are helping to form the new owners’ organization.

“This is character assassination,” said Mace Siegel, a horse owner who resigned from a CHBPA committee this week. “I won’t allow this to be done. None of us are owned by Hubbard. But we are universally turned off by Mr. Sweeney.”

Siegel said that he opposed racing on Friday nights before, because he suspected a conspiracy between Hubbard and the racing board, but Siegel favors night programs now. Hubbard is traveling and didn’t attend Friday’s meeting.

The CHBPA, part of a national organization that represents trainers and owners in most racing states, is the group that has been legislated to negotiate with tracks in California.

The racing board, exasperated that the CHBPA and Hollywood Park have been unable to agree on the Friday night issue after months of talks, bypassed a request from Sweeney to postpone the vote and approved 12 evening cards by a 4-0 margin, with commissioner Rosemary Ferraro abstaining. Two other commissioners were not present at El Segundo, where more than half of the three-hour meeting was taken up by debate over the night racing.

“It’s disconcerting to see what’s transpiring,” said board member George Nicholaw. “These parties are polarized, and we can see that they’re not prepared to move one way or the other.”

Hubbard says that Friday night racing at Hollywood Park will be better for business. The races can be transmitted to other sites, including Los Alamitos, for off-track betting, but Hollywood Park will not be able to accept the telecasts on nights harness and quarter horse tracks are operating elsewhere in California. And Hollywood Park still must negotiate a purse contract with the CHBPA.

Jim Smith, president of the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn., which operates a night meeting that overlaps with Hollywood Park’s main season, has charged that the thoroughbred trainers are illegally using the threat of an entry boycott at Hollywood to preclude his races from being bet on during the Friday night thoroughbred cards at the Inglewood track.

“We feel that the Friday night pie is big enough for all of us,” Smith said Friday. “The thoroughbred trainers are saying that they don’t care what the law says, they’re going to keep the (quarter horse) signal out. But the way I read the law and the rules, they should have no voice in this. That’s going to result in some very serious legal action on our part. We’re not going to sit back and let them break the law.”

Sweeney, a horse owner and trainer, said that the thoroughbred trainers are not out to hurt the quarter horse business.

Disagreeing was Ed Friendly, a thoroughbred horse owner who resigned as a vice president of the CHBPA this week.

“The trainers on those (CHBPA) committees are scared to death of the inroads that might be made by the quarter horses,” Friendly said. “They’re out to keep it all to themselves.”

Friendly said that a group of owners, dissatisfied with the CHBPA, is organizing as the Thoroughbred Owners of California. Friendly said that the membership already includes owners of more than 1,200 horses.

“This is no more than an oral minority,” said trainer Gary Jones, a supporter of the CHBPA. “Most of the owners are in our corner.”

Ralph Scurfield, chairman of the racing board, shook his head and said: “We’re not going to make a decision (on Friday night racing) based on (the sizes of the groups). We’ve been listening since October. Postponing a vote today won’t lead to anything.”

After the vote, Sweeney said: “Hollywood Park’s application (for Friday nights) isn’t complete without a horsemen’s (purse) agreement. Without that agreement, we’re back to square one.”

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Stuka and Codified, 1-2 finishers in the Hollywood Prevue Breeders’ Cup Stakes, and River Special, who ran third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Gulfstream Park, are the standouts Sunday in the $500,000 Hollywood Futurity.

Only three other horses--Earl of Barking, Jaltipan and Boating Pleasure--are entered in the 1 1/16-mile race. Earl of Barking, with Alex Solis riding, drew the rail, and outside him are River Special, with Laffit Pincay; Jaltipan, David Flores; Boating Pleasure, Corey Nakatani; Stuka, Pat Valenzuela, and Codified, Gary Stevens.

Stuka has run twice, winning a maiden race at Santa Anita in October and beating Codified by three lengths on Nov. 14. Stuka is a $25,000 supplementary entry, as are Codified, Boating Pleasure, Jaltipan and Earl of Barking.

Horse Racing Notes

In other business at Friday’s California Horse Racing Board meeting, it was reported that the California Department of Justice’s Clenbuterol report is in the hands of the Sacramento County district attorney, who is determining whether board executive secretary Dennis Hutcheson acted illegally. If Hutcheson’s actions aren’t prosecutable, the full report will be turned over to the board. Hutcheson came under fire after he dropped charges against four trainers whose horses tested positive for the illegal drug.