Fairplex Opens With a Modified Schedule

A long-running success, Fairplex Park is nevertheless making a significant change for the 16-day Los Angeles County Fair meet opening today in Pomona.

For the first time since 1981, the meet will have fewer than 17 racing days. Meets of 17, 18 and 19 days have been standard over the years.

This year’s schedule calls for dark Tuesdays, next week and Sept. 20.

“We’re running what we like to call the Del Mar schedule,” said George Bradvica, racing manager for Fairplex, referring to the traditional six-days-a-week calendar at the seaside track that closed Wednesday.

Fairplex used to run its meets with no dark days.

“Seven days a week was tough on everyone,” Bradvica said. “Tuesday was our weakest day under the old schedule, so we decided to drop the Tuesdays and try to beef up our Mondays. We’re running three Mondays instead of two.”

Closing day is a Monday, Sept. 26. On Mondays, Fairplex will offer free admission and programs, and 2,500 free Daily Racing Forms. A pick-four bet will be offered with a guaranteed $100,000 pool.

Bradvica said Fairplex averaged just more than eight horses a race last year and was “hoping to improve on that figure this time.”

Del Mar’s recent average was about the same as Fairplex’s last year.

The opening-day Pomona card of 13 races -- 11 for thoroughbreds and two for quarter horses -- has four thoroughbred races with fewer than eight horses, including a six-horse turnout in the Foothill Stakes.

Probable favorite in the Foothill is Diligent Prospect, trained by Doug O’Neill, the leader or co-leader in the Fairplex standings the last three years. O’Neill led in Pomona in 2002 and 2004, and shared the title with Wesley Ward in 2003. Since Pomona opened in 1933, with six years dormant because of World War II, no trainer has led the standings more than three years in succession.

Diligent Prospect will be ridden by Jon Court, who has been aboard for the gray colt’s two wins and a third in three starts at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. Diligent Prospect hasn’t run since winning at Santa Anita on Dec. 30.

O’Neill’s huge stable includes claiming horses, stakes winners and horses that fit in between. He finished at Del Mar with a bang, winning the closing-day Del Mar Futurity with Stevie Wonderboy, after having won the I’m Smokin Stakes on Monday with another 2-year-old, Bro Lo.

“It’s nice to be able to go in several directions,” O’Neill said. “I love all the challenges. The beauty of the claiming game is that there’s always action. I guess if I had a choice, though, I’d rather just have a barn full of stakes horses.”

One of Diligent Prospect’s rivals in the 6 1/2 -furlong Foothill is the Jeff Mullins-trained Swiss Lad, who in his last race won a minor stake for California-breds at Santa Anita almost a year ago.

Mullins, the leading trainer at Pomona in 2001, when he was just starting in Southern California, led the standings at Del Mar and finished tied for second at Fairplex last year, when O’Neill racked up 15 wins and Ward and Mullins notched eight apiece.

Martin Pedroza will ride Swiss Lad for the first time. Pedroza rode a record 51 winners at Fairplex last year, distancing the rest of the jockey colony. Next in the standings was Omar Figueroa with 14 wins.

Pedroza has been No. 1 at Fairplex every year since 1999 and overall has won a record 431 races at the five-eighths-mile bullring. David Flores is a distant second with 291. Pedroza is named to ride 10 horses today.

*

Although the Bay Meadows Land Co., which is expected to close on its $260-million purchase of Hollywood Park later this month, may eventually have non-racing plans for the Inglewood track, one of its executives, Jack Liebau, told the California Horse Racing Board’s dates committee that a new Polytrack surface was under consideration.

“We don’t know what we’ll do at this time,” said Liebau, who said after Wednesday’s meeting that Bay Meadows would be studying the introduction of Polytrack at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky. In Lexington, Ky., Keeneland has gone to Polytrack -- a wax-coated synthetic surface introduced in England about 15 years ago -- for its training track.

Del Mar also is considering Polytrack in place of its dirt track.

A Polytrack surface at Hollywood Park reportedly would cost $5 million.

*

On-track betting at the 43-day Del Mar meet that ended Wednesday totaled $108.9 million, an increase of 6.5% over last year. Daily attendance averaged 17,007, almost the same as last year. Overall betting of $608 million was a record for Del Mar and represented an increase of 4.8%.... The $100,000 Bay Meadows Speed Handicap, a six-furlong race for 3-year-olds on Oct. 1, is a stake that the San Mateo track hopes will attract Lost In The Fog, the undefeated sprinter. Lost In The Fog trains at Golden Gate Fields in Albany.