FAIRPLEX : Successful Meeting Ends Amid Doubts Over Future

Another Los Angeles County Fair has come and gone, and so, too, has the horse racing meeting that for the last 57 years has accompanied it.

About 100,000 fans attended the races at the little dirt track at Pomona. They, and 170,000 or so others at satellite locations bet $95,730,051, an average of $5,038,424 a day, both Fairplex records.

A successful meet? No question.

But celebration has been tempered. Looming as a threat to future Fairplex success is a proposal before the California Horse Racing Board by the Thoroughbred Owners of California that would, in essence, reduce this meet, as one reporter wrote in the Daily Racing Form, “to the rinky-dink days of its distant past.”

The TOC, among other things, wants to alter the racing calendar after next year so that racing can be held at Hollywood Park during what has been the traditional three-week break between Del Mar and the Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita.

The proposal, written and backed by a few of the more influential owners, as well as the TOC board of directors, suggests that Del Mar start a week earlier and Oak Tree a week later to allow for the Hollywood Park meet.

The proposal also suggests that Fairplex, whose 19-day meeting is held during the same break, be required to lower the quality of its races and perhaps change to a night-racing schedule, which would eliminate competition with the larger track.

The racing board so far has declined to implement such a plan, however, and there is a lot of opposition. Oak Tree does not want to change its dates and Los Alamitos, which has night racing, does not want to run opposite Fairplex.

The subject of change figures to be a hot topic later this week at a meeting between the Southern California Horse Racing Assn. and the TOC.

Neil O’Dwyer, vice president of the Los Angeles County Fair Assn., defended the Fairplex meet as a viable part of the local horse racing scene.

“We are concerned about this and we’re not going to leave any stone unturned to preserve the integrity of what we have,” O’Dwyer said.

What they have is a relatively small venue and a very small track--five-eighths of a mile, compared to the standard one-mile oval.

But in large part because of the efforts of Ralph M. Hinds, who ran Fairplex from 1978 until his death last year, it has come to be called “the biggest little track in the country,” and ranks behind only Del Mar, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park in daily average handle among North American tracks.

Because this meet lacks many of the bigger names in racing--several notable trainers come, but many of the jockeys use the time to take a break--Fairplex represents a rare opportunity for the lesser-known riders to prove themselves.

Jose Valdivia Jr., an apprentice, was the rider to beat this year, winning two stakes races and the jockey title with 21 victories.

Horse Racing Notes

Mel Stute became the all-time leading trainer at Fairplex. He had nine victories this meet, running his total to, 126, four more than Jerry Fanning, who had two this meeting. . . . Jockey Matt Garcia has been suspended for seven racing days--Oct. 8, 9 and 11-15--for failure to know the distance of a race. Garcia, aboard Finney’s Fortune in Saturday’s fifth race, eased up as he crossed the wire a full lap short of the actual finish line.