As Santa Anita approaches winter meet, Q&A with GM Nate Newby

Don’t despair if you were a big fan of the downhill turf sprints at Santa Anita. According to a man who should know, they might not be shelved forever despite the track’s new turf chute that will accommodate sprints up to 6 1/2 furlongs.

Santa Anita’s 84th winter-spring meeting is upon us, and the historic track will have a new Christmas toy to play with beginning Saturday, courtesy of track superintendent Dennis Moore and his crew. It’s an expensive toy, costing about a half-million dollars.

“Dennis and his guys did a terrific job,” Santa Anita’s new general manager, Nate Newby, said on the eve of the track’s opener that includes one turf sprint — a 6 1/2-furlong allowance race for 3-year-olds and older. It will go as the sixth race.

Newby, who began at Santa Anita as an intern in 2002 before being promoted to marketing director in 2011 and then to vice president of marketing in 2013, takes over the track’s reins at a good time.

Yes, repercussions from COVID-19 make it difficult to run a race track on a day-to-day basis, but there are also two major positives in Newby’s favor:

— There have been no fatalities over Santa Anita’s main track during afternoon racing the entire year, following a disastrous 2019 when 37 horses had to be euthanized, leading to a bevy of protocols mandated by Belinda Stronach, chairman and president of Santa Anita’s parent company 1/ST Racing (formerly known as the Stronach Group). They included drug reform, additional veterinary regulations and observations, training approvals and analysis of entries.

— Betting handle, despite the fact there have been no fans in the stands at California race tracks since March, has been on the upswing. Del Mar and Los Alamitos are coming off meets that produced numbers that were better than could have been expected. When horse racing was one of the only games in town early on during the coronavirus, bettors watched the races on TV and turned to advance-deposit wagering to get their bets in.

“It just shows when we give the fans a good product to bet on, they’re going to be there,” said Newby, who took over as the track’s assistant general manager in January before being elevated to the top spot on Nov. 30.

Newby said downhill turf sprints have not been officially eliminated. Like 1/ST Racing COO Aidan Butler said in September, the downhill sprints will be even more special if they return. They won’t be as plentiful, but a smattering is better than none at all.

“It’s not my call,” Newby said. “We’re not prepared to make a statement on that yet. We’re still evaluating the downhill sprints.”

It’s also not Newby’s call when it comes to allowing fans to return or letting owners attend the races to watch their horses run.

As things stand now, owners can show up to watch the races, but they must submit an application through the Thoroughbred Owners of California. Depending on the L.A. County Department of Public Health, that could change at any time.

When will fans be allowed back?

That’s also out of Newby’s hands, but he’s disappointed the place will be empty Saturday when Santa Anita offers six stakes races, including three Grade Is, that highlight an 11-race program.

“I’ve been looking forward to this year for two years because I knew opening day was going to fall on a Saturday,” he said. “We could have had around 40,000 fans here on Saturday. We’ll be happy when we can welcome back the fans.”

Still, Newby is cognizant of the fact that L.A. County health officials are calling the shots.

“Our main objective is for everyone to be safe, to follow the proper protocols,” he said. “We must abide by what the County health officials tell us.”

Santa Anita’s sister track, Golden Gate Fields in Northern California, has been closed since Nov. 12 because of an outbreak of the coronavirus on the backstretch. A Golden Gate official said this week that the local health department had not given the track clearance to resume racing and it will not re-open Saturday as scheduled.

“That just magnifies how closely we have to adhere to the protocols,” Newby said. “It’s something you worry about every day during these times.”

Santa Anita has been forced to cut back to three-day race weeks in recent years because of a horse shortage that shows no signs of changing anytime soon.Los Alamitos ran four days a week for the final two weeks of its recent 11-day meet, but the Orange County track also had the horse population to pull it off. About 200 horses came down from Golden Gate to run, swelling Los Alamitos’ field sizes to nearly nine horses per race.

“Getting back to four days a week is certainly something we’d like to do in the next year or two,” Newby said. “Certainly, it’s one of the things we’ll be looking at in the future. It’s one of our major goals.”

It’s a future that nobody can predict with any certainty because of the pandemic.

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