Synth An Option–But Not An Immediate One–For Santa Anita

[Wandering Eyes]

The Week In Review by T.D. Thornton

Lost in the shuffle of last Thursday’s marathon six-hour California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) meeting was a key update on the future of track surfaces at Santa Anita Park and plans for new stabling on the southern California circuit.

Aidan Butler, the chief strategy officer and acting executive director of California racing operations for The Stronach Group (TSG), which owns Santa Anita, outlined the company’s near- and longer-term plans during 47 minutes of questioning by commissioners prior to the track being awarded a conditional license for its upcoming winter/spring meet.

Butler reported that Santa Anita is about to undertake a “full renovation” of its dirt track that involves “remixing and reblending the whole surface.”

The job was originally scheduled to start last week “but because of the inclement weather, we had to hit pause on that,” Butler said.

He said the new timetable for the work could start as early as Monday, “which means the main track will be in not in use for the three days while it settles, and then we’ll be reopening it again towards the end of [Thanksgiving] week to continue training.”

When the CHRB asked whether or not TSG was considering a switch to a synthetic main surface for Santa Anita, Butler disclosed that the idea has come up, but added that TSG will tread with caution before committing to any sort of change.

“We’ve met with quite a few [synthetic track specialists], including Michael Dickinson and his wife, Joan, regarding a conversation about Tapeta,” Butler said. “What I didn’t want to do is any form of knee-jerking and putting in a track that we–you know, in the past, synthetics haven’t necessarily worked out that well in California. So I want to make sure whatever we do is done with data and science.

“My preference would be to actually trial different sorts of surfaces out at Santa Anita in real-time weather conditions, in the real climate, to make sure whatever we fundamentally end up doing–be it more turf racing, be it synthetic, be it a hybrid dirt and fiber, more like a Fibresand–it [will] stand the test of time and be the best that we can do,” Butler added.

Butler told the commissioners that TSG is putting together a work group on the issue, and that more announcements about that process would be “coming soon.”

Santa Anita management also does not foresee turf sprints that start on the downhill course returning in the near future.

“As we currently stand, [the downhill course] will not be used for the 6 1/2 [-furlong] sprint,” Butler said. “It will only be used for the longer-distance races.”

Butler was asked for an update on the stabling expansion that the track had proposed back in 2018. At the time, the project was billed as nine new barns plus dormitory facilities on the 36-acre north parking lot off Colorado Place between Gates 5 and 6.

“We originally looked at plans to put in another 800 stalls in the northern lot,” Butler said. “It was deemed that a more sensible approach would be to expand San Luis Rey Downs,” the training facility 95 miles south of Santa Anita that TSG also owns.

“We are currently going through quite an intense due diligence period, and it seems at this early juncture that we will have the ability to add more stalls to San Luis Rey,” Butler said. “We think it’s a much better environment, and also it lessens the traffic and the amount of usage on the Santa Anita main track.”

The San Luis Rey expansion would be done in stages, Butler said. First would be the construction of barns with 500 new stalls, with the ability to add another 750 at a later date for an eventual total capacity of 1,750 stalls.

“There’s an unfortunate thing with Santa Anita that a lot of the barns are actually on the historic registry [dating from] when Santa Anita was used as an internment camp during the second World War,” Butler said.

“One strategy that we’re particularly looking at is if we have the ability to lower the amount of horses in Santa Anita, then we can we can use that time to actually restructure and clean up some of the barns,” Butler said. “We do have pretty much an ongoing maintenance schedule with our crews at Santa Anita. It’s just that the barns were built a hell of a long time ago, and it’s pretty unfortunate that you can’t just knock them down and start again.”

Going to the governor…

Now nine months into the equine safety crisis in California, one of the regulatory issues that has repeatedly come up is the CHRB’s inability to make certain changes because state statutes either stand in the way or don’t allow the board to implement some types of regulations.

Earlier this year, Governor Gavin Newsom gave the CHRB a mandate to come up with a list of recommendations designed to improve the health, safety and welfare of the racehorse. A draft of that list has been in the works, and it’s due Dec. 4.

At Thursday’s meeting, CHRB executive director Rick Baedeker read into the record some of the suggestions that the board is likely to propose, and he led off with three items that he said will probably require statutory changes that must be approved by the legislature and the governor. They were:

1) Modify the confidentiality requirements for positive medication tests

“The statute currently requires that ‘All test results shall remain confidential unless and until a complaint is filed,'” Baedeker said. “That’s a time frame of usually one to three months, or it can be longer depending on the time of the investigation. The board may recommend a modification to the statute to make public any positive test within 24 hours of receipt of confirmation of the presence of a prohibited substance from the independent laboratory.”

2) Codify what happens to the money the CHRB takes in from license fees and penalties

Baedeker said the CHRB is likely to recommend that “these funds be used for purposes that are designed strictly [to fund] welfare and safety measures, and would be used to contract additional state veterinarians, safety stewards, and the infrastructure support that they need.”

3) Change veterinary medical record exemptions so more stakeholders have access to horse health documents

“There is a strong opinion that access to these medical records should be available to owners, tracks veterinarians, official veterinarians, as well as–at least to some degree–trainers and jockeys. So that’s going to be explored,” Baedeker said.

Baedeker also ran down a list of other CHRB proposals that are likely to go to the governor but wouldn’t require statutory changes to be implemented. The ones that stood out were:

• A horse must pass digital image scrutiny (ie, PET scan) as a requirement to come off the veterinarian’s restricted list.
• Requiring the submission of 30-day medical reports at the time of entry.
• Exploring stronger rule options for requiring trainers to comply with the advice of their veterinarians.
• Gradually prohibiting the use of all corticosteroids via a phasing-out process.

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