Del Mar drops most Monday cards, goes to five-day week

Del Mar will run on a five-day per week schedule in 2009, dropping most

Monday cards and shifting some of the races from that day to other programs. The

lone exception to the new Wednesday-through-Sunday routine will be racing on

Monday, September 7, which is the Labor Day holiday.

For the past several months, Del Mar officials had been exploring the idea of

a five-day race week with organizations and involved parties, including its

landlord -- the state of California through the 22nd District Agricultural

Association -- as well as horsemen's groups and the track's various labor

unions. All agreed that the date adjustment made practical and economic sense.

The final hurdle was cleared Friday when the California Horse Racing Board

gave its approval to the plan that reduced the track's meet from its usual 43

days down to 37.

"We're adapting to circumstances," Del Mar Thoroughbred Club President and

General Manager Joe Harper. "There's a pinch on everyone due to the economy;

there's a pinch on the number of racehorses available in the state. Racing folks

have been talking about racing less and presenting a better product because of

it for some time now. We're not going to talk about it anymore at Del Mar. We're

going to do it."

The track's tentative plans call for one additional race to be added to its

cards on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. For the most part then the five-day

schedule would be Wednesdays (nine races), Thursdays (eight races), Fridays

(nine races), Saturdays (10 races) and Sundays (10 races).

The track's first post will remain at 2 p.m. (PDT) on all days except

Fridays, when it will shift to 3 p.m. and the track will adjust its popular

Friday late-card theme from "Four O'Clock Fridays" to "Three O'Clock Fridays."

The track also is investigating special promotions around the Wednesday "welcome

back" card following the two-day break with the possibilities of a free gate and

reductions in food and beverage prices under consideration.

In total, Del Mar will run 28 fewer races over the course of the season,

which this year opens on July 22 and closes on September 9. It also will shift

18 races to other days.

"Shifting those races to better days will be a real positive for us," said

Tom Robbins, Del Mar's vice-president for racing and racing secretary. "Our

Monday cards had become the least attractive of the week and it was harder and

harder for us to fill six days worth of quality programs. As a result of this

change, I think our fans will see larger fields and better cards across the

board."

Robbins noted that the horse population in California has declined of late,

putting even more pressure on his office to fill cards. The number of mares bred

in the state and the live-foal crop are both down over the past decade. Further,

the discretionary spending involved with the claiming and buying of racing stock

also has tightened, reflective of current economic circumstances.

Del Mar officials additionally have monitored situations across the country

at several different racetracks where there have been experiments with fewer

racing days, most recently at the winter meeting at Gulfstream Park in Florida.

There a five-day weekly racing schedule was installed in place of the normal

six-day routine, with a resultant rise in field size and pari-mutuel handle.

The track's new Wednesday through Sunday schedule will be the first time it

hasn't run six-days-per-week since the 1945 season at the close of World War II.

It started racing under the Wednesday through Monday schedule when Sunday racing

was green-lighted in the state in 1973. Prior to that it has raced Mondays

through Saturdays.

The 2009 season will be Del Mar's 70th summer of Thoroughbred sport. The

track was founded by Bing Crosby and a collection of his Hollywood pals back in

1937, but did not race for three years (1942 through 1944) during World War II.