Oak Tree Represents Work in Progress

The Great Race Place has become the Great Scaffold Place, but the Oak Tree Racing Assn. will open on schedule today, kicking off a 31-day season that will be an audition for many of the horses that are focused on the Breeders’ Cup in Florida in November.

Santa Anita, where the Oak Tree group has been a tenant for 30 years, is in the opening phase of new owner Frank Stronach’s ambitious rebuilding program, and fans are being asked to be patient. This year’s Breeders’ Cup, Nov. 6 at Gulfstream Park, had been penciled in for Santa Anita before Stronach’s many blueprints got in the way.

“We’ve been on a hectic schedule to get things ready,” said Santa Anita President Lonny Powell, who heads Stronach’s new management team. “It hasn’t been a time for anybody faint of heart or weak at the knees. But the racing will be good, the employees are fired up and we’re looking forward to a dynamite meeting. We hope to pull this off with only a minimum inconvenience for the fans.”

A 215-foot-long bar and a 700-seat restaurant aren’t ready, their completion expected in time for the Santa Anita meet that opens Dec. 26. Meantime, where Stronach’s first $20 million shows the most is on the apron that fronts the homestretch, and in the infield, where a giant television screen has been erected between the tote boards.

“When Mr. Stronach first mentioned redoing the apron, I couldn’t visualize it,” Powell said. “I’ve been to a lot of racetracks, and to me it was always that an apron was an apron was an apron. But now that it’s in, I can see the difference, and I don’t think there’s an apron at a track in North America that compares with it.”

The apron, previously just a place where the grandstand crowd milled during the races, now has 150 benches for permanent seating and there are terraced viewing decks at a trackside promenade.

The big-screen TV, which sits on a 10-foot base, is 43 feet high and 50 feet across.

“It’s the largest in the industry,” Powell said. “It will be something all the fans will appreciate. You don’t see many people watching the races with binoculars anymore. We’ve all become fans who look at the screens.”

The screen will obscure part of the run down the backstretch. To make room for the new bar, part of the box-seat area needed to be knocked out, and during construction there are four sections of boxes in the upper grandstand that have obstructed views.

“The Stronach signature is to be upscale but casual,” Powell said. “ ‘California tropical’ might be the right label to put on it.”

The opening-day feature is not new--fillies and mares running the hillside turf course--but the 6 1/2-furlong Autumn Days Handicap has been renamed the Sen. Ken Maddy Handicap. Maddy, a former state senator from Inglewood, was instrumental in assisting racing in Sacramento over the last quarter-century. This week, he was named the recipient of the American Assn. of Equine Practitioners’ George Stubbs Award, in recognition for sponsoring legislation that raised $11.5 million for equine studies at UC Davis.

The first of the prep races for Breeders’ Cup contenders comes Saturday with the running of the $500,000 Yellow Ribbon Stakes. On Sunday, the male grass horses take over in the $300,000 Oak Tree Turf Championship.

The most intriguing horse in the Yellow Ribbon is Fiji, who hasn’t run since she won the stake last year to wrap up the Eclipse Award for best female on grass. The Yellow Ribbon has frequently decided the Eclipse winner, but this year it’s been reduced to a steppingstone because a $1-million turf race for females has been added to the Breeders’ Cup program.

The California 2-year-olds that are heading to Gulfstream will get their final tuneups in the Oak Leaf Stakes for fillies Oct. 9 and the Norfolk for the males Oct. 10. Other stakes with Breeders’ Cup implications include the Lady’s Secret Breeders’ Cup Handicap on Oct. 10; the Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap and the Oak Tree Breeders’ Cup Mile on Oct. 16; and the Ancient Title Breeders’ Cup Handicap on Oct. 17.

Although there are about 2,000 horses on the grounds, all that Santa Anita can handle, the battle to supply full fields will be ongoing for Mike Harlow, the director of racing who followed Powell from their previous stints at Turf Paradise.

“We have a horse population problem,” Harlow said. “Everybody’s priority is to increase field sizes. A long time ago, when Santa Anita ran, the barns at Hollywood Park would be full too, and you could draw from that group. Now, there may not be 1,000 horses stabled at Hollywood.”

Harlow mentioned several trainers--Ben Cecil, Bobby Frankel, Dan Hendricks and Jack Carava--who have moved their main strings to Santa Anita. They used to train at Hollywood and van their horses across town for races.

“We need to make the racing exciting,” Powell said. “A new facility, no matter how good it is, means nothing without good racing.”

Horse Racing Notes

Laffit Pincay begins the meet with 8,790 wins, 43 short of Bill Shoemaker’s record. . . . Pincay’s mount in the Sen. Ken Maddy, Theresa’s Tizzy, is winless in five starts this year after winning six of eight last year. . . . Desert Lady, the 121-pound high weight in the feature, had a three-race winning streak snapped when she ran sixth at Del Mar. Trainer Richard Mandella’s filly has three wins and a second in four starts down the hill at Santa Anita.

Oak Tree Meeting

* Dates: 31, starting today and ending Nov. 8.

* First post: 12:30 p.m. weekends, holidays and Mondays; 1 p.m. weekdays; noon on California Cup day (Oct. 31); 9:30 a.m. on Breeders’ Cup day (Nov. 6).

* Graded stakes: $100,000 Sen. Ken Maddy Handicap (today); $500,000 Yellow Ribbon (Saturday); $300,000 Oak Tree Turf Championship (Sunday); $200,000 Oak Leaf (Oct. 9); $200,000 Norfolk (Oct. 10); $200,000 Lady’s Secret Breeders’ Cup Handicap (Oct. 10); $500,000 Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap (Oct. 16); $250,000 Oak Tree Breeders’ Cup Mile (Oct. 16); $200,000 Ancient Title Breeders’ Cup Handicap (Oct. 17); $250,000 Oak Tree Derby (Oct. 23); $150,000 Carleton F. Burke Handicap (Oct. 31); $250,000 Las Palmas Handicap (Nov. 7).

* Last year’s leaders: Jockey--Alex Solis, 28 wins; Trainer--Bob Baffert, 21 wins; Owner--Prince Fahd Salman, $430,343.