john cherwa | Horse Racing Free Tips

1/ST Racing Says It May Sell Or Close Santa Anita

1/ST Racing, the owners of Santa Anita, have threatened to close or sell the “Great Race Place,” making the threats on the eve of a critical meeting of the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) in which the future of racing in the northern half of the state will be decided. Santa Anita has been calling for racing to shut down in the North, which, it believes, will help strengthen racing at Santa Anita and the other Southern California tracks.

The story was first reported by John Cherwa in the Los Angeles Times.

With 1/ST set to close Golden Gate Fields on June 9, the future of Northern California racing is very much up in the air. Hoping to save racing in that part of the state, Pleasanton, a fair track, will ask the CHRB to approve a 10-week meeting that would run from Oct. 19 to Dec. 15.

If those dates are approved, it may complicate Santa Anita's efforts to reallocate revenue from simulcasting that is currently split between the northern and southern tracks. 1/ST is backing legislation that would reallocate simulcast money from Northern California to Southern California in the event that racing ceases to exist in the northern portion of the state. Santa Anita believes it needs the extra simulcast money to make racing viable in its part of the state.

Additionally, Santa Anita is hoping that with Golden Gate shutting down, many horsemen from that area will relocate to Santa Anita. If that happens, Santa Anita management believes it can add a fourth day to its weekly racing schedule and will be able to card races with bigger fields.

On Tuesday, Craig Fravel, the executive vice-chairman of 1/ST Racing and Gaming, sent a three-page letter to the CHRB, urging the Board not allocate the extra dates being sought by tracks that are members of the California Authority of Racing Fairs (CARF).

Fravel contended that if racing is approved at the CARF tracks “an analysis of alternatives for Santa Anita and San Luis Rey (training center) will be undertaken in short order. As noted, the current financial model and required capital expense make no sense and the consolidation of operations as discussed last year and at the January Board meeting is the only alternative that has been presented.”

Fravel also wrote that over the last five years Santa Anita has incurred operating losses in excess of $31 million while investing over $32 million in capital projects.

“The current model is simply unsustainable,” Fravel wrote.

Fravel also contended that the proposals being floated by the CARF tracks “is lacking in so much detail that it is difficult to understand what has been done over the last eight months and even more difficult to understand how the Board can be asked to put the entire thoroughbred industry in the state at risk by allocating dates on the basis of speculation.”

Fravel also said that allocating dates to the CARF tracks will lead to immediate purse cuts at Santa Anita and planned capital projects will be re-evaluated.

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Cherwa: Joke About Hitting Swiss Skydiver Gets Albarado’s Interview Squashed By TVG

Los Angeles Times racing writer John Cherwa took a moment to congratulate TVG and Santa Anita for quick reactions to an inappropriate comment made by jockey Robby Albarado over the weekend. Albarado piloted champion filly Swiss Skydiver to victory in her 2021 debut in the Grade 1 Beholder Mile on Saturday.

While speaking with TVG's Britney Eurton on the Arcadia, Calif., track's live feed, Albarado was asked to describe his relationship to the gutsy winner of the 2020 Preakness over eventual Horse of the Year Authentic.

“You love this filly. You call her your girlfriend. How special is she to you?” asked Eurton.

“Well, I hit her once. I hope she still loves me,” was Albarado's answer.

TVG had been taping the interview with plans to air it, but chose not to after hearing Albarado's comment. Santa Anita reportedly also scrubbed the interview from its archive and departed from its usual practice of including quotes from the track feed in its circulations to media.

Albarado was charged in 2011 with assaulting his wife and later entered a guilty plea to a Class A misdemeanor for attempting to interfere with a witness in the case. In 2012, he was convicted of fourth degree wanton assault related to a fight with a girlfriend. That conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Cherwa also reported that Albarado later received a three-day suspension for his ride in the race because he raised his arm above his shoulder while striking the filly, contrary to California's revised whip rules.

LA Times Columnist John Cherwa Joins Writers’ Room

Los Angeles Times columnist John Cherwa has seen a lot in just a handful of years on the Southern California racing beat, and Wednesday morning he joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to discuss the past, present and future of racing in the Golden State. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Cherwa talked about the progress in Santa Anita's safety record, the top 3-year-olds on the west coast and the effect of last week's protest at Golden Gate Fields.

“I wrote tens of thousands of words on the horse breakdowns at Santa Anita,” Cherwa recalled. “I was on the phone with a source who was at the track when Battle of Midway went down and then it just mushroomed from there. Last week at Golden Gate, you saw where protesters went on the track over some recent deaths there. At that point, there were five deaths. One was a sudden death, which was probably a heart attack. There were only two what we call breakdowns. At a similar point in 2019 at Santa Anita, there were 20. I think a lot has been done [since], mostly I think through pre-race evaluations. If you watch the Los Alamitos races on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, you'll see a lot of scratches, and a lot of those are because of pre-race evaluations. So I think the progress has been immense. However, until the number [of deaths] becomes zero, it's never enough [for anti-racing protestors]. And zero is, in many terms, unattainable number.”

Asked about the challenges to presenting the sport for a national audience, Cherwa said his dispassionate approach to racing has led to some backlash both from within the industry and outside of it, but that having only covered racing for a few years affords him a fresh view of things.

“I get hate mail from a lot of the horse racing people because I cover horse deaths and things like that,” he said “I get threats from the animal rights activists because I'm not covering it enough. I've even gotten death threats from the animal rights people. Frankly, no one is covering that more than I have, not because I want to, but because it is a big story in California. The fact that I'm kind of new to this myself, means that I'm learning along with my audience and I do on a lot of things. I've got like three or four, I'll just call them sources, that I will call all the time to have them explain something to me just to make sure of what I think I know.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, in a jam-packed West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, the writers discussed the first sentencing domino to fall from last year's indictments, the official news of Gulfstream adding a Tapeta surface that first broke on the show back in December, and the Golden Gate protests. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Safety Is The Top Priority? Despite Scrutiny, Los Alamitos Conducts Racing On Rain-Sodden Course

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times' John Cherwa found himself staring at the live feed from Los Alamitos “in horror” because of the sloppy track conditions on which the horses were running.

“The first few races were OK, and then the rains came and came and the track became sloppier and sloppier,” Cherwa wrote in his horse racing newsletter for the LA Times. “The horses on the short Quarter Horse sprints were clearly slipping and sliding and bumping into each other because they couldn't get traction.”

In the evening's seventh race, a 3-year-old named Gowdy fell coming out of the starting gate and dislodged his jockey. A statement from Los Al's marketing and publicity director Orlando Gutierrez explains that Gowdy “locked up from behind” at the start of the race, causing the fall, but that the horse had returned to his stall and “appears to be doing well.”

His jockey, Cruz Mendez, also seems to have escaped major injury since he returned to ride at Los Al on Sunday's card.

“Why were there horses racing on such an unmanageable track if safety is your top priority?” Cherwa questioned. “The stewards or the track superintendent have the right to suspend racing. In this case, it stopped raining by the eighth and final race. Could racing have been put on hold earlier while the bad weather passed?”

On July 10 last year, the California Horse Racing Board held an emergency meeting to discuss a rash of equine fatalities at Los Alamitos, resulting in a 10-day probationary period. Los Al produced a new plan for equine and rider safety which was approved by the board, including an entry review panel.

CHRB vice chairman Oscar Gonzales spoke out against Los Al's safety record (29 equine fatalities were reported during racing or training from Dec. 27, 2019 through 2020) at the CHRB's December meeting, encouraging his fellow commissioners to grant the track only a six-month license. That move prompted Los Al owner Ed Allred to threaten shutting down racing at the Cypress, Calif. track altogether.

The CHRB's January meeting saw the Los Al license reinstated at a full year, despite two additional equine fatalities recorded on Jan. 17. After the vote was handed down, Gonzales promised increased scrutiny of Los Al's horse safety record.