Santa Anita Hopes to Buck the Trend

Santa Anita’s 1997 wish list isn’t any different than Belmont Park’s or Fairmount Park’s. Putting more horses on the track and more people in the stands are widespread priorities for racing’s nervous ‘90s, and Santa Anita hopes to do both during an 86-day meet that starts at noon today.

Some people in racing say that attendance doesn’t matter anymore, but they should be drummed out of the counting house, guilty of self-deception. A crowd of 20,000 betting $2 million is still better than two guys betting $1 million apiece. Santa Anita’s on-track attendance is down 62% since 1988, and counting off-track its overall attendance is off 22% during the same period. Those figures are as good a reason as any for the furrows on Cliff Goodrich’s brow.

Goodrich, the president of the place, acknowledged that there was a tiny blip upward on the attendance graph during the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita this fall. But meet-long forecasts are dicey stuff. “We’ll try to duplicate what Oak Tree did, but that will be a tough order,” Goodrich said. “The only thing I can say for sure is that the opening-day crowd count will begin with a three.”

Even in the era of satellite betting, which began for Santa Anita in the 1987-88 season, opening-day on-track crowds have been strong, but last year--a Tuesday--only 30,898 showed up, easily the lowest count since off-track sites got so convenient.

In a way, racing is a victim of its own ingenuity. It has expanded the marketplace by taking the product to the customer, and now track executives are struggling with their creation. The off-track horseplayer doesn’t buy his hot dogs at Santa Anita, and besides the loss of the ancillary revenue, the track running the races also doesn’t do as well at the betting windows. In California, the host track’s take shrinks from 5% or 6% to 3% or 4% when the bets come from off-track.

“We’re trying to do more local-store-type marketing,” Goodrich said. ‘We’re trying to put more focus on our immediate community. We’re not going to forget our other fans, but a reality is that many people don’t want to travel more than 30 miles or so to go to the races anymore. But when people get here, we’re going to try to treat them better.”

Short of a $2 bet for the price of $1, the best way to a bettor’s heart is to offer full fields, every race, every day. Generally speaking, more horses equate with better betting propositions. There were 101 horses entered for today’s nine-race card, which is nice work by the racing office, but a windfall that will be impossible to sustain.

“Our objective is to average nine horses a race by the end of the meet,” Goodrich said.

Starting in January, Santa Anita will run eight-race cards during the week and nine-race cards on weekends. The horse population, no longer large enough to support year-round racing properly, will determine what Santa Anita does the rest of the meet. Eight-race cards, used on an experimental basis last season, are a throwback to a palmier time. Santa Anita introduced nine-race cards in 1963.

“We’re encouraged by Santa Anita’s decision to cut back on the number of races,” said Don Valpredo, a member of the California Horse Racing Board. “It’s something the board has been advocating for some time. We’d like Santa Anita and other tracks to hold the line by averaging about eight and one-half races daily. This will help us create the quality fields we need.”

If only every horseman at Santa Anita had the resources of trainer Wayne Lukas’ barn. Lukas has dozens of soon-to-turn 3-year-olds, and in today’s feature, the $200,000 Malibu Stakes, he will run Victory Speech and Dr. Caton, two of his veterans from the past season.

Without much impact--he was 10th in the Kentucky Derby and fifth in the Preakness--Victory Speech has still earned $869,260 this year, and he could surpass the $1-million mark overall with a win in the Malibu. Victory Speech hasn’t sprinted in about a year, but he always has had speed, and as a younger horse the Malibu distance was his forte. He is undefeated at seven furlongs.

Horse Racing Notes

The 86-day meet runs through April 21. . . . There are exceptions to the Wednesday-through-Sunday schedule: There will be racing next Tuesday, and on Jan. 20, Feb. 17 and April 21; and no racing on Jan. 22 and Feb. 19, both Wednesdays. . . . Eddie Delahoussaye, who missed the final week of the Hollywood Park meet because of a viral infection, has six mounts today, including Hesabull in the Malibu. . . . Emile Ramsammy, who led the Woodbine riders with 175 wins, is now riding locally. Ramsammy, 34, is a native of the West Indies. He has been riding in Canada since 1990 and this year won the Queen’s Plate at Woodbine. . . . In Excessive Bull, third as the 9-10 favorite in the Hollywood Futurity, is a probable entrant for Saturday’s $100,000 California Breeders’ Champion Stakes. . . . The press box at Santa Anita is now named in honor of the late Allan Malamud, a columnist for The Times. . . . The Thursday-through-Sunday harness season opens at Los Alamitos tonight and runs through April 6. . . . Dashing Folly, the 3-year-old filly who won the Champion of Champions last Sunday at Los Alamitos, probably clinching quarter horse racing’s world championship for 1996, is expected to run next year. She will start the season with a 10-race winning streak.