They Miss Greener Days

The turf course was getting a workout Saturday at Hollywood Park -- by geese, ducks and the occasional flamingo.

Locating a comfortable spot on this cold, dreary day wasn’t difficult for bettors either.

Winnie Mosa of Los Angeles, a self-described $2 bettor, had the track side of the paddock to herself before the fifth race. As she rested her elbows on the railing and flipped through the day’s program, she was stumped by a 9-year-old colt who hadn’t raced in five years.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” she wondered aloud.

Similar confusion reigned from the start of the six-week autumn meet at Hollywood Park, which concluded Monday.

The meeting began in disarray when an experimental turf course installed by the track’s previous owners failed to root properly, making for hazardous going. Track officials had little choice but to cancel all turf events.

Those included 11 scheduled stakes races worth more than $2.3 million. Among the casualties was the centerpiece of the meet, the three-day, $1.7-million Autumn Turf Festival over Thanksgiving weekend, which included three Grade I races. Four Wednesday programs were also scratched.

The setback presented a major challenge for Hollywood Park, where turf racing accounts for a quarter of its regular fall programs.

The final numbers, however, suggest that the 68-year-old facility might have weathered the worst of the storm.

Although on-track attendance was down nearly 14.5% from the 2004 meet, the on-track handle -- the amount of money wagered on-site -- fell only 0.3%.

Track President Jack Liebau, a former Santa Anita executive who is also the president of Bay Meadows track in San Mateo, said the meet benefited from a strong stretch run that included consecutive Grade I stakes races last weekend, the highest-graded races of the 27-day meet.

“I think we’ve rallied,” he said.

To deter horsemen from moving their stock, track officials raised purses for the remaining races by 20% and paid shipping costs.

“I shipped a few to Golden Gate, but all these horses could use a rest anyway,” said Doug O’Neill, who had more starts than any other trainer at the autumn meet and finished second in earnings.

Other trainers made similar decisions, meaning a glut of turf horses will be ready to race at Santa Anita, beginning Monday.

“There will be some very good racing right off the bat,” said trainer John W. Sadler, who kept his top two turf horses, Geronimo and We All Love Aleyna, stabled at Hollywood Park. “There’s a lot of fresh turf horses waiting to go over there.”

Even if visitors to Hollywood Park didn’t stay away from the betting windows, some said they noticed a difference in the caliber of the fields, what with some turf horses running on dirt for the first time.

“I think the lack of turf racing has had a lot of effect,” Al Irbing of Hawthorne said.

Some longtime bettors, such as Jimmy Higuerta of North Hollywood and Chester Clark of Watts, said the fields were smaller and unbalanced, leaving nothing but heavy favorites and severe longshots.

“There’s no value here, and that’s the bottom line,” said Higuerta, a Hollywood Park regular for 40 years. “You tend to stay off races.”

But track officials were quick to point out that field sizes were close to those during the 2004 autumn meet.

“I had a little trepidation about our field sizes,” Liebau said. “And the field sizes are also going to come back almost identical with last year.”