Hollywood Park Eyes Twilight

Hollywood Park, faced with economic and cosmetic considerations, has asked the California Horse Racing Board for permission to run twilight racing cards on all but the first of the 13 Friday nights during the upcoming season.

With racing board approval, Hollywood Park would open the 66-date spring-summer meet with a 7:15 p.m. card on Friday, April 20, then switch the first post to 3:30 p.m. for the remaining Fridays. In a couple of ways, the statewide power crisis has been responsible for Hollywood Park dropping the frequent Friday-night cards that it pioneered in the early 1990s. Hollywood Park’s original schedule for this season had called for nighttime cards on all but one of the Fridays.

“At least we’re in good company,� said Rick Baedeker, president of Hollywood Park, as he talked about the track’s emergency shuffle. “The entire state has been traumatized by the electricity problem.�

Baedeker said that Hollywood Park had spent $500,000 for four backup generators that will prevent a disruption of racing should the threatened rolling blackouts materialize this summer. But it would have cost the track an additional $250,000 for two more generators that would have kept the lights on during Friday-night racing.

“And there’s another thing,� Baedeker said. “Many of our customers will be seeing individual electricity rate hikes that are going to be prohibitive. We wouldn’t want to take the chance of arousing their justifiable resentment when they would see us flaunting a lot of electricity with our lights on Friday nights.�

Unintentionally, Hollywood Park will be conducting a thorough Southern California experiment in twilight racing. Santa Anita, because most of its season comes during the winter months and standard time, has no lights and is limited to the number of twilight cards it can try. Del Mar, which runs a seven-week summer season, has embraced twilight racing on Friday nights.

The last time Hollywood Park ran at twilight, in 1992, the one-shot card was also influenced by outside forces. After the wide-scale rioting that followed the court decision in the Rodney King beating case, Hollywood moved its Friday nights to the daytime in the interest of public safety, but on Friday, July 3, of that year, the track ran 13 races that started in the late afternoon and went well into the evening on the first day of the Independence Day weekend. On-track, a crowd of more than 20,000 bet $4.8 million. Track officials were pleased by the turnout, but disappointed in themselves for having a fireworks display that riled dozens of horses in the stable area.

“The fireworks were just a bad idea,� Baedeker said Friday.

Hollywood will run eight races on this year’s twilight cards.

Although many horsemen, who work long days and incur overtime pay for their help because of Friday-night racing, will be at least partially pleased with the 3:30 first post, they still face a return to Friday-night racing at Hollywood Park in less tumultuous times.

“We’re committed to Friday nights when we’re in a better position,� Baedeker said. “We look at Friday nights as a loss leader. We discount a lot of the concessions, and the per-capita betting doesn’t compare with daytime racing, but we still feel it’s the best way to introduce new people to the sport.�

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Asked to name the top five 3-year-olds, trainer Nick Zito listed A P Valentine, Point Given, Monarchos, Dollar Bill and Hero’s Tribute.

Zito is prejudiced, of course, since he trains A P Valentine, and his colt will have Dollar Bill and Hero’s Tribute to beat when he runs in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland on April 14. Next for Point Given is the Santa Anita Derby on April 7 and Monarchos’ final pre-Kentucky Derby test will be the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 14.

Until last Saturday, A P Valentine seemed to have dropped off the Derby trail. He was a standout 2-year-old, but after suffering sore shins while running last in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs in November, he had made only one start, finishing a distant third in a seven-furlong race at Gulfstream Park in mid-February.

Zito missed the Florida Derby, saying that he didn’t have A P Valentine ready, but last Saturday, in an optional claiming race at Hialeah, the colt broke the track record for 1 1/16 miles with a clocking of 1:40 1/5. The Hialeah strip played abnormally fast all day and there was little quality besides A P Valentine in the race.

Zito has named Corey Nakatani to ride A P Valentine in the Blue Grass, the prep the trainer’s Strike The Gold won en route to his Derby win in 1991. Zito also won the Derby with Go For Gin in 1994.

Notes

The day after Chilukki was bred to Storm Cat, another champion filly, Surfside, was retired. Chilukki beat out Surfside for best 2-year-old filly in 1999, then Surfside was voted best 3-year-old filly last year. Trained by Wayne Lukas for William T. Young’s Overbrook Farm, Surfside won eight of 15 starts, including four victories in Grade I stakes, and earned $1.8 million, but she was off form in two starts this year. Storm Cat stands at Overbrook, but because Storm Bird, his sire, is also a maternal sire in Surfside’s family, she will be bred to another stallion. . . . The family of Richard “Cubby� Culberson, the former jockey who died Monday, is hoping that a coroner’s report, due in about 10 days, will determine the cause of death. Culberson, who was 57, was injured a week ago in a spill while he exercised a horse at Fairplex Park. He was treated and underwent tests at Pomona Valley Hospital before being released. Culberson, who hadn’t ridden in a race since 1999, scored the biggest of his 523 wins when Chance Dancer won the 1978 San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita. Later, they finished second to Affirmed in the San Felipe Stakes.