Santa Anita card 4-9-2022

[Al Gobbi]

six of the first seven races Saturday at SA (Santa Anita Derby Day) have fields of five or six before scratches

[Onesome]

It's funny that still in America the revenue model depends on bettors yet track exec and racing secretaries still cater to the whims of the owners and trainers who love small fields for better chances of better paycheques.

[the little guy]

Originally Posted by Onesome

It's funny that still in America the revenue model depends on bettors yet track exec and racing secretaries still cater to the whims of the owners and trainers who love small fields for better chances of better paycheques.

There are no horses there.

Did we really need yet another thread about the sad demise of CA racing?

[jocko699]

Originally Posted by the little guy

There are no horses there.

Did we really need yet another thread about the sad demise of CA racing?

What?

[v j stauffer]

Originally Posted by Onesome

It's funny that still in America the revenue model depends on bettors yet track exec and racing secretaries still cater to the whims of the owners and trainers who love small fields for better chances of better paycheques.

You think Santa Anita is carding short fields to "cater to the whims of the owners and trainers who love small fields for better chances of better paycheques?"



C'mon Man!

[Parkview_Pirate]

Originally Posted by Al Gobbi

six of the first seven races Saturday at SA (Santa Anita Derby Day) have fields of five or six before scratches

It appears that another contributing factor to this card's non-betability is that those six races are all stakes (including the SA Derby), which historically draw smaller fields anyway.

In contrast, Keeneland has fine cards today and tomorrow, and spreads their stakes races over every racing day. We'll see how the rest of the meet plays out though, since I seem to recall plenty of small fields last year at the Kee meets.

Racing's decline continues. No surprise there. The cards at SA and Aqu over the winter have been just awful. Ten years ago, who would have ever though the best CA circuit would be in the Bay area? Even tracks with eight to ten horse fields are still not worth wagering on, as the even money chalks are winning them all. I believe as Thask has pointed out, the weekday cards are not even worth looking at - there's no value in 90+ percent of the races.

The path ahead for racing to contract, adapt and maintain a decent product won't be smooth or logical. It's survival of the fittest now.

[westernmassbob]

Originally Posted by the little guy

There are no horses there.

Did we really need yet another thread about the sad demise of CA racing?

I know some connections in LRF racing and supposedly they will start racing some horses every 7 days or so. That’s a red flag in itself. Demise unfortunately is a very accurate description of the state of racing in SOCAL.

[HorsemenHeist]

Originally Posted by the little guy

There are no horses there.

Did we really need yet another thread about the sad demise of CA racing?

This feels different than the other days of the year where Southern California struggles to put together a decent racecard.

This is the #1 day of the year for racing at Santa Anita and to put on a card with all these short fields is very troubling, they can at least get over 100 horses for Big Cap and Malibu day. Some of the racing program decisions for this big day were rather "interesting" let us say.

And lets not get started with the jockey exodus. It is a real shame for racing what happened to what used to be the best racing circuit in the world.

[HorsemenHeist]

Originally Posted by v j stauffer

You think Santa Anita is carding short fields to "cater to the whims of the owners and trainers who love small fields for better chances of better paycheques?"



C'mon Man!

I'm sure Santa Anita would love to have 12 in the gate for every race but What is the point of carding both the Monrovia down the hill & Royal Heroine at a mile on turf for F&M? Carding the Monrovia down the hill and Royal Heroine at 1 mile on turf take from the same horse population, could have had a nice field of 11 but two graded stakes of 5 & 6 are just fine with the horsemen.

[Onesome]

Aside from the top group level races, there is no reason for races to be still restricted by sex and age and not to be handicaps. Why do you need to be a NASA rocket scientist to read the condition book these days?

[Bustin Stones]

This is the dumb part about tracks competing with each other for horses. The track secretary tries to keep the horses there by creating races so everyone has the feeling and opportunity to collect a purse. So the conditions get crazy specific. The conditions get even crazier at harness tracks. If they organized it so that some tracks took the girls and some took the boys....some took horses that have graduated all the NW conditions, etc.
In some harness races all you have to do is take the entry that graduated every condition except they agree to be entered for a price.

[burnsy]

The thing is everyone on here posted a little piece of the truth. Every angle of this problem is pretty much covered by your posts. Getting the racing industry to openly admit it and make changes is whole different matter. That’s the problem in a nut shell. It’s like any other problem in life . It has to be admitted before there’s any hope of remedy. They’ll be selling tomorrow as the best thing since sliced bread…… but is it really?! There will be people claiming… quote..,.. “ A wonderful day of racing on hand.” But if you’re wagering. What do you think? Honestly

[theiman]

There are 53 horses on the Saturday card in the late pick 5. Over 10 a race

The next day has 47 horses in the late pick 5, over 9 a race.

So there are horses to run, just not a lot of stake horses.

By the way, not mentioned, SA will be taking 4 days off from racing.
April 22-23-24 and 29th, returning on Saturday April 30th.

No need to start a separate topic.

[castaway01]

Originally Posted by theiman

There are 53 horses on the Saturday card in the late pick 5. Over 10 a race

The next day has 47 horses in the late pick 5, over 9 a race.

So there are horses to run, just not a lot of stake horses.

By the way, not mentioned, SA will be taking 4 days off from racing.
April 22-23-24 and 29th, returning on Saturday April 30th.

No need to start a separate topic.

But that's BECAUSE of all the stakes races. You take the stakes races out and all the biggest fields would be split into two separate five-horse or six-horse races to fill the two cards.

[Parkview_Pirate]

Mighta jinxed Keeneland. They always, well almost always, put on a very high quality product. But just now they hosed up the 5th race results, switching the second and third finishers, and showing those results as "official". D'oh! Bought gave me a heart attack.

Reminds me of when that happened at Sportsmen's Park back in the late 1980s, though it took them a couple of races to figure that out. I came into the intertrack wagering room at Fairmount Park just as they were announcing the correct finish - and pandemonium resulted, as betters were turning over trash cans looking for good tickets.

I haven't seen anything like that until today.