Sonoma County Fair cancels Thursday’s racing, citing lack of horses

The Sonoma County Fair has a brand new inside turf rail, simulcast wagering from 10 other venues available in the grandstand and a dirt track that is fairly pristine after sitting quiet during two years of COVID-19 restrictions. It has everything horse racing fans could want for a full afternoon of thrilling competition — except the horses.

In a move no one associated with this annual summer tradition could recall happening before, fair officials were forced to cancel Thursday’s races because they couldn’t find enough entries to fill out the slate.

“I’ve been here since about 2013 or 2014, and it’s always been tough,” said Bob Moreno, who as Sonoma County Fair race secretary is responsible for scheduling races. “But it’s never been like this, ever.”

And it wasn’t a one-day oddity. Moreno had wanted eight races for Friday. But even after moving a couple of the canceled Thursday races to Friday’s calendar, he had to hustle to end up with seven.

Moreno recounted his work lining up competition for one race during this year’s fair — a 5/8-mile claiming race for fillies. He set the claiming price at $3,200, meaning anyone could buy any of the horses for that fee. One horse owner had to get at least at $4,000, because of complicated claiming rules, and Moreno needed that filly so badly that he went around and convinced each of the other owners to raise the bar.

“I worked on that for three days to get six horses,” Moreno said. “You talk about scrambling, that’s a scramble.”

To some extent, our local fair is a victim of a temporary glitch that officials hope will be avoided next year. But the struggles go much deeper than bad timing, exemplifying a shortage of thoroughbreds that is plaguing racetracks everywhere.

Equibase Co., which supplies racing information to the Jockey Club, the Daily Racing Form and other sites habituated by all those who follow the sport, keeps track of cancellations each year. If you look at the full racing days canceled by Aug. 10 in the United States and Canada over the past few years, the number goes from three in 2018 to six in 2019 to seven in 2021. (The 2020 racing year was a wipeout, thanks to COVID-19.) There have already been 10 cancellations so far in 2022.

It’s hard to stage a race, tracks have learned, when you don’t have the horses.

In the mid-1980s, the number of thoroughbred foals born in the United States hit a historic high of about 50,000 per year, said Ray Paulick, publisher of the Paulick Report, an independent industry news source. Now, the births have fallen below 20,000 annually.

There aren’t as many horses in the pipeline, because fewer people are breeding them to race. With rising costs for land, feed and transportation, and with swelling opposition to a sport that euthanizes its athletes when they break their legs, the “sport of kings” doesn’t seem to strike younger generations as regal.

“And there has not been a similar reduction, I believe, in the number of races run,” Paulick said. “So it’s a supply-and-demand thing.”

The equation is especially bad in California, he said, where the thoroughbred foal count has dropped from approximately 3,600 to fewer than 1,500 in 20 years.

And when it comes to booking races, the northern half of the state is faring worse than the south.

“If you look at Northern California racing — whether it’s Golden Gate Field or the fair circuit, and you compare it to Del Mar and Santa Anita, there’s a big difference in purse money,” Paulick said. “But the difference in expenses for trainers and owners is not as big. If a horse is good enough, they’ll ship it down to Del Mar and skip Northern California.”

The purses at Del Mar, in San Diego County, can be three times the size of Santa Rosa’s, Moreno said.

Already facing an uphill battle, Moreno and his colleagues at the Sonoma County Fair ran into another obstacle in 2022. Most of the horses that race here tend to be trucked up from Golden Gate Fields. This year, the Berkeley track closed for renovations, forcing horse owners to take their animals to, for the most part, Pleasanton and Sacramento.

Golden Gate Fields has just reopened its stables. Many owners are currently in the process of moving back, or will be shortly. A side trip to Santa Rosa became complicated and disruptive.

As a result, fewer than 100 of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds’ 800 horse stalls are filled.

The fair even offered shipping incentives to the first 200 horse owners who agreed to stable in Santa Rosa, to help with vanning costs, said the fair’s racing director, Stacey Lapham. Heading into the second weekend of races, they have yet to draw 200 takers.

And the races in Santa Rosa are generally featuring smaller fields. On Friday’s card of seven races are three that include just five horses. Two others have six horses; two others have seven. That’s not enough, Paulick said.

“The national average is just over seven per race — which is not great either,” he noted. “That has declined over time. When you get down to five horses in a race, people don’t want to bet on it. Then it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy of less betting money, less purse money, less revenue for raising horses.”

Most tracks, including those on the county fair circuit, offer no more than three days of racing per week, Lapham said. She knew it would be a challenge to fill out eight days of competition over two weeks, but the fair chose to be ambitious.

And she hasn’t been disappointed, except for the Thursday cancellations.

“I can’t believe how many people have come out for races,” Lapham said. “And they’re so excited. Box seat sales went great. And online sales, too. We’re selling out the grandstand. We had 5,074 (last) Friday, and 5,507 on Saturday, just for the grandstand. That’s excellent. All in all, I think we’ve had a great meet.”

Still, the flight away from horse farms, especially in the West, troubles industry veterans. That includes Moreno, who has been a race official for 45 years. He would have retired already, he said, if it weren’t for the pleasure of working alongside Lapham, whom he calls the hardest working person he’s ever met.

“She’s the only reason I’m here,” Moreno said. “It’s so hard to get this done. So difficult. And it is disheartening.”

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.