Derby Crowd Races to Hollywood Park

The biggest races of Hollywood Park’s spring-summer meet, the $750,000 American Oaks and $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, are still more than two months away, but the Inglewood track is ready for its most lucrative weekend of the year.

Beginning this morning at 7:30, Hollywood Park will be open for business, ready to take bets on Churchill Downs’ card today, when the main event is the Kentucky Oaks, and Saturday, when the highlight, of course, is the Kentucky Derby.

Although the Oaks, which features 3-year-old fillies, is never going to reach the heights of the Derby, Hollywood Park management will have 20-30 extra mutuel clerks on hand, and although Friday nights are better attended, the per capita handle will be better today.

On Oaks Day last year, 5,670 were at the track and the handle was $1,508,124, meaning the per capita was about $265, which is about $100 more than the average Friday night.

For the Derby card, Bob Poole, Hollywood Park’s mutuels manager, said the track could have more than double the number of clerks for a Saturday, saying there would probably be 300-350, compared with the usual 150-180.

Poole said the self-service machines will be open at 7:30 a.m. and clerks will be scattered throughout the plant at that time on both days. He said it starts to get busy around 10 a.m. on Derby Day.

There will be plenty of wagering opportunities. Besides the 17 live races that will be run in Inglewood and the full cards from Churchill Downs, fans will be able to bet on races from Aqueduct, Pimlico, Calder, Hawthorne, Turf Paradise and Bay Meadows over the next two days.

With so many options, it’s no wonder Kentucky Derby Day has accounted for six of the seven top daily handles in Hollywood Park history. The largest handle was $67,096,242 when the track last had the Breeders’ Cup in 1997.

The biggest handle on Derby Day for the track was $24,544,892 in 1999, followed by $23,850,224 in 2002, $23,500,460 in 1998, $22,838,205 in 2001, $22,605,941 in 2000, and $22,584,838 last year.

A year ago, Hollywood Park and its satellites handled $4,666,294 on the Derby, which was a little more than 5% of the national handle and was more than half of what was wagered at Churchill Downs, $9,079,841.

Attendance on track will probably swell Saturday. A year ago, 20,625 showed up to see Funny Cide upset Empire Maker and this was the largest crowd of any Saturday during the meet. The only larger crowd was 21,017 on July 13, the day of the Gold Cup which also featured a ceremony honoring Laffit Pincay.

“It’s a long day, but it is an enjoyable day,” said Merv Nolan, a mutuel clerk. “You get a lot of first-timers who are out here just to have fun.”