Putting Santa Anita Meet in Perspective

According to a press release, the 24-day that concluded Sunday defied industry trends, showing “solid gains on track and from all sources.”

That’s all well and good, but a little misleading. For one thing, an increase of 1 percent in average daily attendance over the past two years is nothing to get excited about.

The last time Santa Anita hosted live fall racing was the 31-day Oak Tree Meet in 2009. Excluding the Breeders’ Cup, which drew 96,496 over two days, the average dialing attendance was 9,563, and that was down 11 percent from an average of 10,719 in 2008.

In 2010, the Oak Tree Meet was held at Hollywood Park, where attendance was dismal. Attendance figures for that meet are not available, but anyone who made the trip to the Inglewood track could probably count the number of people there on a weekday.

Santa Anita did not disclose the average daily attendance for the just-concluded Autumn Meet, but the Daily Racing Form reported that, according to figures released after each racing day, it was 6,805.

That figure represents a 14 percent decline from the 2009 figure of 9,563, even though there was no racing this year on Wednesdays, when crowds are usually smaller than any other day.

But Santa Anita officials, who must have somehow gotten Hollywood Park attendance figures from last year’s Oak Tree Meet, are claiming a 1 percent increase over the past two years.

No attendance figures were included in the Santa Anita press release regarding the meet that just ended, just the claim of a 1 percent increase. But there was never a crowd that came close to 20,000, not even on Cal Cup day. Attendance this past Saturday, when fans could place bets on the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs, was 16,598, the high for the meet.

Moving on to money matters, there is positive news. Santa Anita reported that the amount wagered both on track and off track (commonly known as the all-source handle), was up 5 percent from 2009, when Oak Tree was at Santa Anita, and up 22 percent from last year, when the meet was at Hollywood Park.

According to the Daily Racing Form, the average on-track daily handle for this year’s Autumn Meet was $1,322,702 and the all-sources average handle was $6,631,285.

Another positive was that, with a four-day race week in place for all but one week of the Autumn Meet, there were bigger race fields. The average field size this year was 8.8 horses, compared to 7.7 in 2009.

“The increase in field size is a result of two things–an improving horse inventory and the fact that our natural dirt track is performing very well,” said Santa Anita President in the press release.

That assessment about the track was contradicted by trainer Barry Abrams in a Los Angeles Times story. Abrams, saying the track is “the worst it’s ever been,” claimed to have had eight horses injured, including two who were euthanized after suffering injuries during morning workouts.

There were certainly no complaints about the track coming from trainer Don Warren or owners Peter Hilvers and Bud and Judy Johnston. Their horse, Acclamation, was named horse of the meet in a media poll. Acclamation’s string of consecutive graded stakes victories reached five with a win in the Grade II Clement L. Hirsch Turf Championship Oct. 2.

John Sadler won the training title, finishing 14 wins, four more that Mike Mitchell.

Rafael Bejarano, who won the sixth race on closing day by a nose aboard 9-2 longshot Avarooskie, edged  Joel Rosario for the riding title, 32 wins to 31. Rosario had won the last four riding titles on the Southern California circuit.

Rosario, 26, and Bejarano, 29, have combined to win the riding titles at every Southern California meet since the Santa Anita winter-spring meet of 2007-2008.

Live racing resumes at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.