HOLLYWOOD PARK : Night Programs Will Include Bets on Harness, Quarter Horses

Horseplayers expecting to bet on nine thoroughbred races at Hollywood Park Friday night found telecasts of 11 quarter horse and 13 harness races added to the program.

Hollywood’s management was able to provide betting on the two extra breeds because of an unexpected development at a California Horse Racing Board meeting in Cypress earlier in the day. During a discussion about why Hollywood Park, which opened on April 21, has not yet signed a contract with horsemen, officers of the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. and R.D. Hubbard, chairman of Hollywood Park, agreed to permit the cross-breed simulcasts during the track’s nine remaining Friday night cards.

Hubbard, fearing a boycott by thoroughbred horsemen at the entry box, had not offered his customers any simulcasts on the first three Friday nights that Hollywood raced. The Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn., currently racing at Los Alamitos, recently sued the CHBPA, claiming that the thoroughbred horsemen’s group was preventing the quarter horse races from being telecast at Hollywood Park on Friday nights.

Besides its live races Friday night, Hollywood Park presented the quarter horse card from Los Alamitos and the harness card from the Cal Expo track in Sacramento.

Although the CHBPA denies that it has threatened a boycott at Hollywood Park, Hubbard quoted Friday from a letter that he said he received from the CHBPA in which an “interruption clause” was mentioned in a discussion of the stumbling blocks that have prevented the horsemen from signing a contract with the track.

“Our membership has taken no position regarding cross-breed simulcasting,” said Chris Clark, president of the CHBPA. “We are not opposed to anything that will maximize purses for our members, but we are also determined to protect live racing. Right now we are exporting more of our races (to other tracks) than we are importing, and we would like to see this balance stay that way.”

Jim Smith, president of the quarter horse group that has sued the CHBPA, said that while he is happy that his races were piped into Hollywood Park Friday night, his legal action will not be dropped.

“There’s still the matter of the three previous Friday nights that we lost,” said Smith, who estimated that his revenues average $20,000 per night from the simulcasting.

Tracks in a few other states, including Maryland and Massachusetts, import many more races than they run with their own horses. At Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, two days before this month’s Preakness, horseplayers were able to bet full thoroughbred cards from Hollywood Park, Belmont Park and Churchill Downs, plus the harness races from Freehold Raceway.

“This industry can go either way right now,” said Joe De Francis, the president of Pimlico. “If this works, then we are headed for a new age of prosperity. If it doesn’t work, then we are clearly headed for the shoal.”

Frustrated by the haggling between Hollywood Park and the horsemen, California’s racing commissioners took two steps Friday in trying to bring the sides together. They ordered the track and the CHBPA to eliminate the Friday night cross-breed simulcasting as a bargaining issue, and directed the racing board’s staff to prepare a schedule of fines that might be assessed if a track doesn’t have a contract with its horsemen by the start of a race meeting.

Commissioner Don Valpredo suggested fines of $25,000, plus $1,000 a day, if there is no contract between horsemen and a track by opening day.

“It’s a major mistake for the racing board to get involved in forcing people to sign a contract,” said Hubbard, who recalled a situation in which he had gone two years without a horsemen’s contract.

The rest of Friday’s meeting was punctuated by apologies--from Santa Anita president Cliff Goodrich to the racing board for his track discouraging customers from betting, and from the board to Hollywood Park and the CHBPA for improperly approving a five-race addition to the racing program on Kentucky Derby day, May 1.

Santa Anita, faced with a state tax increase that would have resulted in an estimated loss of $2 million in profits and purse money if its seasonal handle exceeded $250 million this winter, reduced advertising, canceled promotions, didn’t re-schedule two rained-out days and eliminated trifecta betting toward the end of the meet.

“We chose the route of full disclosure,” Goodrich said, “and then we were subjected to humiliation and embarrassment that we didn’t deserve.”

As far away as Arkansas, an April newspaper headline read: Santa Anita Says: Don’t Bet Our Races.

Continuing his account to the racing board, Goodrich said: “We weren’t proud of what we did, but it was an unfortunate position to be in. If we had gone over $250 million, we would have had to reach about $265 million in order to make up for the higher taxes we would have had to pay. At the time we made the decision to cut back, on March 26, I had no idea that business was going to soar in the final weeks of the meeting. My decision would have been different had I known that. I hope this is something that won’t be repeated, because I’m not proud of what we did.”

Goodrich said that Santa Anita paid $30 million to the state in taxes in 1992 and showed an operating loss of $2.9 million.

Commissioner Stefan Manolakas referred to the Santa Anita situation as a “fiasco” and said that new legislation should prevent a duplication of the experience.

“Santa Anita’s wakeup call for all this should have come at the start of the season, instead of in March,” commissioner Valpredo said.

Hollywood Park was given board approval to take bets on five non-Derby races from Churchill Downs on Derby day, then saw the permission taken away when the CHBPA reminded the board that accepting interstate races with purses of less than $100,000 violates a California law.

“The blame for this is right here,” said chairman Ralph Scurfield, pointing to the table of board members. “There was an inappropriate request (from Hollywood Park), and we OKd it.”

Horse Racing Notes

The California Horse Racing Board gave Hollywood Park permission to increase its daily triple bets from three to seven. . . . Exchange, the highweight, heads a field of nine fillies and mares for Sunday’s $150,000 Gamely Handicap at Hollywood. The field for the 1 1/8-mile race, in post-position order, with jockeys and weights: Miss Turkana, Antonio Castanon, 115 pounds; Revasser, Corey Nakatani, 117; Miatuschka, Sal Gonzalez Jr., 111; Misterioso, Corey Black, 112; Exchange, Laffit Pincay, 123; Bel’s Starlet, Gary Stevens, 116; Gold Fleece, Pat Valenzuela, 114; Toussaud, Kent Desormeaux, 116; and Wedding Ring, Eddie Delahoussaye, 114. Revasser and Toussaud will be coupled in the betting. The previous Gamely winner who carried more weight than Exchange was Estrapade, at 124 pounds in 1985. . . . Desormeaux, finishing up a five-day suspension Sunday, can ride in the Gamely because of California’s designated-race rule.