Folks place bets at Santa Anita Park, the place purses have declined together with the variety of horses racing and lack of cash coming from off-site betting.
(Getty Pictures)
Determining the purse for 34 of the 35 graded stakes races at Santa Anita is, for horsemen anyway, maddeningly easy: Simply search for the minimal purse required in North America.
For a Grade 1 race, that’s $300,000. It drops to $200,000 for Grade 2 races and $100,000 for Grade 3s.
Even the one native exception, the Santa Anita Derby, pays “solely” $500,000 after providing $750,000 from 2021-24. The present quantity is half the purse on provide for the highest 3-year-old races at Gulfstream Park (Florida Derby) and Honest Grounds (Louisiana Derby), and simply one-third what Oaklawn Park pays for the Arkansas Derby.
Final yr the Santa Anita Derby attracted solely 5 entries, which decreased the variety of Kentucky Derby qualifying factors out there within the race. That just about stored Baeza, who completed second to Journalism within the Arcadia race, from qualifying for the Derby (he made it within the discipline solely after one other horse was scratched and wound up putting third).
It’s the identical story for older horses, the place Gulfstream provides the $3-million Pegasus World Cup subsequent month plus turf races for $1 million and $500,000. Oaklawn Park has a half-dozen races price at the least $500,000 (two at $1.25 million), and Honest Grounds has three between $250,000 and $500,000. No Grade 3 race at any of these tracks provides lower than $150,000.
All of that makes it tougher for Santa Anita to draw high horses from these states, which enhance purses with cash from slot machines or casinos, one thing not out there to California tracks. Santa Anita, nonetheless, has hiked its purses this assembly for maiden and allowance races.
