The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Santa Anita may postpone its Big ’Cap because of rain
Santa Anita executives are considering postponing Saturday’s racing card, featuring the Santa Anita Handicap and San Felipe Stakes, because heavy rain is forecast.
If that happens, the Saturday races would be run Sunday, and a Monday card would be added to the calendar, publicity director Mike Willman said Wednesday morning.
A decision is expected by early this morning, and entries for the Saturday or Sunday races would be announced today, a day later than scheduled.
A Weather Channel forecast Wednesday afternoon put the chance of rain in Arcadia at 56% Friday — when Santa Anita plans to go ahead with nine races — worsening to 87% Saturday before improving to 20% Sunday and 4% Monday.
Those are conditions that any track would have raced through in decades past. But postponing or canceling races no longer isn’t unusual at Santa Anita since an outbreak of fatal horse injuries during an unusually wet winter in 2019. Santa Anita postponed cards as recently as Feb. 4 and 9 because of bad weather.
Angel City FC forced to reschedule opener
Angel City FC’S season and home opener against Northern California-based expansion club Bay FC has been rescheduled for March 17.
The game, originally scheduled for March 16 at 7 p.m., has been moved one
day later due to what Angel City deemed “an unforeseen scheduling conflict,” adding that “as tenants of BMO Stadium at Exposition Park,” the game will be played one day later. The start time also moves to 4:30 p.m. on March 17.
NHL players Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers, Dillon Dube of the Calgary Flames and Michael Mcleod and Cal Foote of the New Jersey Devils are facing charges in connection with an alleged sexual assault that took place in London, Ontario, in 2018.
The next hearing is scheduled for April 30. since 2022.
ATP chief executive Massimo Calvelli called the new agreement “a major moment for tennis,” and the tour’s announcement touted ways in which it hopes the sport will continue to grow in Saudi Arabia.
Tennis has been consumed lately by the debate over whether the sport should follow golf and others in making deals with the wealthy kingdom, where rights groups say women continue to face discrimination in most aspects of family life and homosexuality is a major taboo, as it is in much of the rest of the Middle East.
The WTA women’s tennis tour has been in negotiations to partner with Saudi Arabia, including possibly placing its seasonending WTA Finals there.
• Croatia’s Donna Vekic and Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska were among those moving into the second round of the Cymbiotika San Diego Open late on Tuesday.
Vekic, a finalist here in 2022, beat local wildcard Katherine Hui, 7-5, 6-2, in her WTA Tour singles debut. A Santa Fe Christian School graduate now playing on the collegiate level at Stanford, Hui is the reigning US Open girls’ singles titlist.
A first-time major semifinalist last month at the Australian Open, Yastremska had to dig deep in outlasting American Caroline Dolehide, 6-4, 5-7, 6-1. The 23-year-old was up a set and a break only to have her opponent force a decider. Yastremska overcame nine double faults in the two-hour, eight-minute matchup.