Racing under a cloud in Southern California in 2011

With clouds hanging over Southern California these days, there is no certainty that the sun will shine on Santa Anita’s prestigious day-after-Christmas opener.

The same thing could be said for all of Southern California racing in 2011.

It could be a strange new world for horsemen and horse fans.

Zenyatta has gone elsewhere. So have several other staples of the local industry — Oak Tree’s meeting and Santa Anita’s surface. If 2010 was the year of the bizarre, 2011 could bring a return to normalcy. Or, more of the same.

Santa Anita’s opener is a key first step. After four years of whining by horsemen and bettors on the synthetic track issue, Santa Anita owner Frank Stronach stepped in front of a foul-mood crowd in August at Del Mar and promised to turn the track back to dirt. The crowd, which trusted Stronach like rabbits trust cats with claws, responded with muffled gratitude.

But presto! The day is almost here and reports on Santa Anita’s dirt are positive. Still, heavy rain in Southern California tends to mess up freeways, mountain hillsides and racetracks, so it’s wait and see.

If all goes well, Santa Anita will deliver, in its four-month meeting, crystal clear mountain views and competitive racing on a sound surface. Also, 54 races with six-figure purses and one, the $1-million Santa Anita Derby, with seven. Santa Anita President George Haines says ticket sales are up and general interest, apparently spurred by the longest inactivity at the track since 1968, can be measured by daily phone traffic.

That inactivity, of course, happened because Oak Tree Racing Assn.’s fall meeting exited on the end of Stronach’s foot. Around the time the Breeders’ Cup board of directors was voting to make Santa Anita and Oak Tree a semipermanent home for its now $26-million autumn extravaganza, Stronach yanked Oak Tree’s lease.

Other than Oak Tree running a successful not-for-profit operation there since 1969 and potentially contributing between $4 million and $5 million to Stronach’s bottom line in 2010, there was no reason for surprise.

The Richter Scale in racing on that decision was about an 8.2.

The Breeders’ Cup, after successful outings in 2008 and 2009 at Oak Tree, said, whoa, Nellie, and returned to safe harbor at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. It remains committed to the Twin Spires only through next season, apparently still uncertain which California fruit and nut will fall next.

Oak Tree, scrambling like Michael Vick, announced a deal to go to Del Mar and then backed off a week later, when horsemen objected. Hollywood Park and President Jack Liebau stepped up with a landing place for Oak Tree.

“We moved everything in 30 days,” says Sherwood Chillingworth, Oak Tree executive vice president. “It was like Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

Now, the second season of Oak Tree at Hollypark is up in the air, even though Liebau is committed to having them back. Racing dates are awarded by the California Horse Racing Board, which has done so only through the end of Del Mar’s summer meeting. That meeting at Del Mar begins July 20. Stronach didn’t give Oak Tree the boot without coveting those autumn dates for himself at Santa Anita, so after 41 years, Oak Tree could be the odd man out.

“We’re just sitting here like a pingpong ball, waiting for somebody to hit us,” Chillingworth says.

Liebau’s Hollywood Park, meanwhile, just finished its autumn meeting with on-track attendance down 0.7% and on-track wagering down 2.1%, but with overall increases in Southern California in both categories because of area off-track betting. A boost to the latter numbers came from attendance and betting here on the Breeders’ Cup in Louisville, the same Breeders’ Cup group Stronach has, at least temporarily, alienated.

Hollywood Park has its own puzzles. Owned by a Northern California land company, it has seemed poised for several years to yield to the wrecking ball. But Liebau is neither defensive nor apologetic about his apparent existence in limbo.

“Our charge is to continue to run this place as if we will be here indefinitely,” he says, adding that he has architects looking at improvements and will upgrade the “creature comforts.”

“I guarantee you one thing,” he says. “The food will be better.”

He adds, jabbing both his rival track in Arcadia and the newspaper interviewing him, “We are old-fashioned here. We pay all our bills. We will not seek refuge under bankruptcy.”

He also says, praising Hollywood Park’s synthetic Cushion Track, “We have the best track in Southern California.”

The day after the interview, the final seven races of the meeting were canceled because of heavy rain.

Then there is Del Mar. The short summer meeting always attracts huge crowds and huge betting, but is plagued by a synthetic surface that can change dramatically as warm ocean breezes cool. Del Mar is owned by the state, but is being pursued for purchase by a group headed by owner Mike Pegram, a man always willing to roll the dice.

That’s pretty much what racing will do in 2011 in Southern California.

Roll the dice.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com