Stables in Pleasanton shuttered until May 1
The Alameda County Fair racetrack and stable area in Pleasanton, which has long served as an auxiliary training facility for Golden Gate Fields and previously for Bay Meadows, is closing Sunday and won’t reopen until May 1.
Golden Gate Fields has been paying $7,100 a day for vanning and stabling of horses at Pleasanton since Bay Meadows closed in 2008. But the horse population has been declining for years both locally and nationally, and Golden Gate recently expanded its barn area.
“We have enough empty stalls at Golden Gate to accommodate the horses at Pleasanton,” said Joe Morris, vice president for West Coast operations of the Stronach Group, which owns Golden Gate Fields. “It costs us more than $200,000 a month for vanning and stabling there. It doesn’t make economic sense to keep Pleasanton open. The money is better spent going into our facility and our purse account.”
Approximately 25 trainers, accounting for about 300 horses, have based their operations at the Pleasanton track. Most of them reluctantly have moved or are moving to Golden Gate Fields, although a few like Terry Knight and Marcia Stortz have moved to Los Alamitos in Southern California, and some horses have been sent to Turf Paradise in Phoenix.
According to Golden Gate Fields racing secretary Patrick Mackey, there are 1,135 horses at Golden Gate Fields, and 170 more
are expected to arrive from Pleasanton in the next few days. The track has 1,500 stalls.
“I guess I have no alternative but to go to Golden Gate,” said Cliff Delima, the 85-year-old patriarch of Bay Area trainers who lives in the Pleasanton area. “But I’m going to hang out here until the last ... minute. I think they’ll have to evict me. This place has developed a lot of horses.”
Casual Lies resided there and went on to run in all three Triple Crown races in 1992, finishing second in the Kentucky Derby and third in the Preakness. Pleasanton native Jeff Bonde started the careers of Grade 1 winners Smiling Tiger and She’s a Tiger at the fairgrounds, whose racing oval opened in 1858.
“I’m sitting over here with 150 years of history,” said Bonde, who is splitting his Pleasanton horses between Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita, where he also trains. “My father and grandfather trained here. It’s sort of sad. Southern California has three offsite training facilities (Los Alamitos, San Luis Rey Downs and Galway Downs). This is the
only off-track site we have.”
The situation in Southern California is different, according to Morris.
“There are more horses in the south,” he said. “Galway will be closed at the end of January and we already closed Fairplex Park. I wish there were more horses here. I’d be happy to call them up in February and say we need your space, but I don’t think that is going to happen. They’ve done a fine job at Pleasanton; it’s just straight economics.”
The Alameda County Fair hosts two race meetings, scheduled this year for June 22-July 9 and Sept. 21-Oct. 1. Whether the Pleasanton facility will be forced to close between those meetings hasn’t been determined.
“I don’t think closing after the summer meet and moving fair to fair is the right thing to do,” said Tom Doutrich, racing secretary for the California Authority of Racing Fairs. “Pleasanton needs to be open May to October, and the fairs need to figure out a way to fund it.”