Drive-Time Racing Considered With Later Post Times Next Year

Hollywood Park, which introduced Friday night racing to the local thoroughbred calendar in 1988, is looking at another innovation, late-afternoon starts, for next year.

“None of this is cut in stone,” said R.D. Hubbard, chairman of the track. “But later posts are possible. We’re considering something like 3:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and the same time on Saturdays.”

If such a schedule is adopted, that would leave only Sunday with a traditional first post of 1 p.m.

Hubbard, Hollywood Park’s biggest shareholder, has been running the track since 1991 and is committed to keeping the Friday starts at 7 p.m. He is interested in attracting a younger audience and believes Friday nights help. Late-afternoon starts would make more racing available to people who work during the day.

Hubbard theorized that late-afternoon starts might enhance Hollywood Park’s Saturday cards.

“People are tired after Friday nights,” he said. “If we started at 3:30 on Saturdays, this would give them extra time to rest up.”

Eventually, Hubbard would like to start the day with full-card simulcasting from two tracks in the East, followed by the live racing card. Current regulations prohibit full-card simulcasts, except from other California tracks and tracks outside the United States.

Hollywood Park’s 67-day season, which ended Monday, was marked by business downturns. It was a meet that could have used Cigar, the 1995 horse of the year. Christine Picavet’s painting of Cigar ran on the front of the daily program throughout the season, but Cigar missed the Hollywood Gold Cup because of a foot injury, giving instead a 20,000 attendance boost to Arlington International when he tied Citation’s 16-race winning streak there this month.

Cigar wasn’t the only horse not to run at Hollywood. “We averaged more starters per race than we did a year ago, but it’s still not a good situation,” said Martin Panza, the track’s racing secretary. “We’ve lost a lot of stables. The allowance races in particular were tough to fill.”

Stakes races also drew small fields frequently. On Sunday, Hollywood put some of its most important stakes in one basket, running four races worth more than $1.5 million, and only 23 horses ran. One of those horses was owned in partnership by Hubbard, his Talloires winning the $700,000 Caesars Palace Turf Championship.

The on-track attendance was only 18,237.

“I don’t have the answer,” Hubbard said. “High purses are not the answer. But we like the idea of having a real strong card with several stakes on the same day, and we’re going to continue doing that.”

Because business recovered slightly toward the end of the season, Hollywood Park will be able to repay to the horsemen more than $500,000 in purses, which had been trimmed in mid-season.

On-track business, more lucrative for Hollywood Park than off-track betting, took a tumble of more than 9% from last year. On-track attendance, averaging 11,000 a day, was down 3.7%. This year’s daily on-track handle average was $2.3 million. Overall betting averaged $10.4 million, the fourth year in a row there has been an increase.

Alex Solis won 69 races, four more than Corey Nakatani, for the riding title.

Ron McAnally edged out Mike Mitchell, 24-23, to win his third spring-summer training title.

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Horse Racing Notes

The Hollywood Park stewards have exonerated trainer Bobby Frankel after a hearing into one of his horses testing positive for morphine after a race at Santa Anita in January. The stewards ruled that accidental feed contamination led to the positive test of Nimble Mind, who won an allowance race. Nimble Mind was still disqualified. . . . Let Bob Do It, winner of the Will Rogers and Cinema Handicaps at Hollywood Park, broke down during a workout and was destroyed. . . . Rush N Flight and her jockey, apprentice Hector Ventura, suffered minor injuries when the 3-year-old filly broke through the inner rail in the stretch of the second race.