Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
FWIW the Strub was really not killed by the Pegasus. It was killed by the desires of trainers re: spacing of races.
That worked fine- until trainers started demanding 4 weeks between races. So what they did was move the San Antonio back to the same day as the Strub. But that cannibalized the product, leaving two very week fields in those two races, so they went ahead and got rid of the Strub. The Malibu survives as a vestige of the series.
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Yes, I was chewing the scenery so to speak (wanted to blame Stronach Group for stuff). There was also a push to change (shorten, of course) the distances which they did starting in 1997-1998 when Silver Charm had a brief rivalry with Mud Route. Then the San Antonio was placed on the same weekend as you said. Later on, the advent of the Sunshine Millions, which had 9f $1 million race in late January didn't help the stakes schedule, either.
And furthermore, Santa Anita management didn't stop at just the 4yo/older horse division. They gutted the La Canada/Santa Margarita series and completed diluted their 3yo stakes by making restricted minor stakes races like the Santa Catalina (now the Robert Lewis) and Bradbury (now the Sham) open races that eventually became graded so that the big barns could keep their horses apart.
