Last week was like any other in California racing, only more so. People messed up the sport again in a new, sadder way. Horses bailed them out again in a new, stirring way.
On Saturday, the colt named Journalism put his Santa Anita education to use to score an instantly legendary win in the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore and brighten what was a miserable week for many who follow racing in this state.
Two days earlier, the state racing board had put what may be the last nail in the coffin of Northern California tracks by voting to reject a bid to hold the late-summer meet in Ferndale that has been a Humboldt County treat for more than a century.
Could we put the horses in charge, please?
The good news will help some of us forget the bad.
For Californians, the half-length victory by Journalism and jockey Umberto Rispoli – for trainer Michael McCarthy and an ownership group led by L.A. native Aron Wellman – was more proof that the best horses here can beat the best anywhere and the weather and first-rate facilities make this a great place to prepare 3-year-olds for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.
Santa Anita-based horses now have won at least one of the Triple Crown races in four of the past six years and 10 of the past 16, and Bob Baffert-trained American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018) swept the Triple Crown. Journalism, joining Rombauer (2021) as a McCarthy-trained Preakness winner, refutes the idea that California’s success with 3-year-olds is all about Baffert’s powerful barn.
Journalism’s victory stands alone, though, because of how it happened. Journalism went off as an even-money favorite but it didn’t look promising for most of the 1 3/16 miles. At the top of the stretch, Rispoli found himself having to decide whether to go around or between horses in front of him, and chose the risky path through a narrowing gap outside Clever Again and inside Goal Oriented.
Some saw it as Journalism and Rispoli bulling their way through, and some saw it as Goal Oriented and Flavien Prat trying to interfere with the horse to beat. (The Pimlico stewards took no action.) Some saw it as Rispoli getting Journalism in trouble, and others saw it as the rider bravely finding a way out. Either way, it was a testing moment for Journalism and Rispoli and they were rewarded by going on to run down five-length leader Gosger near the finish.
It was a triumph for the Santa Anita Derby, too. The question before April 5 was whether that five-horse race would provide the seasoning needed for the Triple Crown rough-and-tumble. But Journalism and Rispoli had to fight their way out of a box en route to victory that day in what turned out to be important seasoning.
The good news won’t help all of us forget the bad.
The California Horse Racing Board’s 4-3 vote in a meeting in Sacramento last week appears to end not only nearly 130 years of racing at Ferndale but any current hope for racing in Northern California.
Golden Gate Fields in Albany was closed in June by the company that also runs Santa Anita, beginning an avalanche of closures of county-fair thoroughbred racing meets as well as Cal Expo harness racing. After all that, CHRB chairman Greg Ferraro and members Dennis Alfieri, Damascus Castellanos and Thomas Hudnut decided Ferndale wouldn’t be able to attract the horses to run a successful meet this August.
The CHRB heard 1 hour and 45 minutes of discussion and public comment, much of it about what racing at Ferndale’s half-mile track meant to that remote community amid the scenic coastal redwoods. Then it decided Ferndale didn’t matter.
I confess my bias in favor of Ferndale, having attended the racing meet 25 years in a row, first because it was fun to write about and thereafter because my parents retired to Humboldt County. But it’s a bias shared by practically everyone else who’s been there.
They know how Ferndale’s small purses help to sustain jockeys, trainers and owners at the foundation of the racing pyramid. They know how jockeys and trainers are welcomed by name with signs in shop windows on Ferndale’s Victorian Main Street.
They know stories about Ferndale’s sense of humor. One night, pranksters sneaked into the track and erected highway signs next to the first turn (“25 MPG”) and backstretch (“DEER XING”) – and racing officials kept the signs in place for the rest of the meet for everyone to enjoy.
They know the extended market for the sport that is lost in the push for what is euphemistically referred to as “consolidation” of California racing into a single circuit at Santa Anita, Del Mar and Los Alamitos.
Santa Anita has been bragging about its gains in handle, attendance, purses and field size, with betting up 5% at the Dec. 26-April 6 Classic Meet compared to a year earlier and up 14% midway through the April 18-June 15 Hollywood Meet.
But without Golden Gate Fields’ winter-spring meet this year, handle statewide in 2025 was down 7% for daytime racing and 5% overall as of last week, CHRB executive director Scott Chaney told board members.
I wondered what someone with broad perspective thought about this moment in California racing. I phoned Doug O’Neill, who has the distinction of having trained winners of Triple Crown races (I’ll Have Another in 2012, Nyquist in 2016) and Ferndale’s 1 5/8-mile Humboldt County Marathon (Mucino in 2025).
“You’re trying to stay positive,” O’Neill said Thursday morning from his barn at Santa Anita. “Journalism is an unbelievable representative of how great California racing is.”
At the same time, O’Neill said, Ferndale’s charm made it a “short, miniature Saratoga or Del Mar … It was a great addition to California – all those fairs were. They’re going to be greatly missed and hopefully one day can be revisited.”
Consolidating racing in Southern California “is so short-sighted,” O’Neill said, “because once that wanes, what else are we going to cut to make something else look bigger?”
It’s that kind of moment in California racing.
Watching or competing, you have to try to enjoy the good, such as what happened at Pimlico, while not forgetting the bad, like what was done in Sacramento.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
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