Track to shut down for one week after COVID-19 spike

Del Mar will not race from Friday through Sunday this weekend after a group of jockeys tested positive for the coronavirus, an official said.

The track intends to resume racing July 24, the official said. The summer meeting began July 10 and has had three days of racing.

The decision to cancel racing this weekend was made in consultation with San Diego public health officials. Jockeys were tested Tuesday, and the results were made available Wednesday morning.

The cancellation of racing is the latest setback in a summer meeting that has been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. The track was scheduled to run five days a week, but is operating on a Fridaythrough-Sunday basis for most of the meeting, which runs through Sept. 7.

The meeting is being held without ontrack customers and with a limited number of employees on-site. Without ontrack handle, overnight purses were cut 20 percent before the start of the meeting and a majority of stakes are being run at lower levels than the corresponding meeting in 2019.

Del Mar had drawn a ninerace program for Friday and 11 races for Saturday, including the California debut of Maximum Security, the champion 3-year-old male of 2019, in the Grade 2 San Diego Handicap.

The coronavirus has affected all tracks in Southern

California this year. The Santa Anita winter-spring meeting was disrupted from late March to mid-May after the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health ordered the track closed at the start of the pandemic after the racetrack was classified as a nonessential business.

When racing resumed May 15, there were no ontrack spectators.

Los Alamitos has operated its evening Quarter Horse and lower-level Thoroughbred meeting without spectators. A two-week daytime Thoroughbred meeting at Los Alamitos earlier this summer was run without spectators.

Earlier this month, five jockeys that rode at Los Alamitos on July 4 tested positive for coronavirus.