Meet sees small handle bump

CYPRESS, Calif. – Los Alamitos completed its two-week December meeting with a 2 percent increase in all-sources handle when compared to similar days in 2018, the track announced in a statement shortly after Sunday’s closing day.

The track did not publish detailed attendance and handle figures.

Average field size was 6.97 runners in the 60-race season, a decline from 7.44 during a 70-race season in December 2018. The reduction continues a trend occurring at all Southern California tracks this year.

The seven-day meeting was held over one fewer day than the corresponding meeting in 2018. This year, Los Alamitos began the meeting on Friday, Dec. 6, and did not race on Thursday, Dec. 5, which it was entitled to do.

The brief meeting was dominated by Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, who won a record five races on the Dec. 7 program, including the two biggest races of the season – the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes with Bast and the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity with Thousand Words. This was the third consecutive year Baffert has swept the Starlet and Los Alamitos Futurity.

Baffert has won the Los Alamitos Futurity a record 12 times – six times when it was run at Hollywood Park until that track’s closure in 2013 and all six runnings at Los Alamitos since the track began a program of daytime Thoroughbred racing in 2014.

Baffert led all trainers with seven wins at the meeting that ended Sunday, the 10th time he has won or shared a title at Los Alamitos since 2014.

Apprentice jockey Jorge Velez, 21, won his third riding title at Los Alamitos this year, finishing with nine wins, three more than Abel Cedillo. Velez won riding titles at the summer meeting in June and July and the Los Angeles County Fair meeting in September.

Los Alamitos ran eight weeks of daytime Thoroughbred racing from 2014 through this year, but in 2020 will have only five weeks. There will be no live racing for a week in Southern California in July to allow Del Mar to build revenue from simulcasting for its purse account, which is at a deficit, and to create a gap between meetings in an effort to boost field size at the Del Mar summer meeting.

The September dates typically run at Los Alamitos will be held at Santa Anita to give that track an expanded late summer and autumn meeting.

Los Alamitos will have two daytime Thoroughbred meetings – from June 25 to July 5 and Dec. 3-20.