RIP Golden Gate Fields

Do we have an all-purpose horse racing thread? Anyway, track managers to concentrate efforts on its two SoCal tracks after this season ends. With Bay Meadows' closure last decade, GGF was the last major track in the area. Wonder what this will do to the fair circuit - if there is still one.

Golden Gate Fields racetrack in Northern California to close this fall

 

Never been there, though I'm familiar with it from following racing. Can't say I'm surprised

For years, the sport hasn't been able to get out of its own way, and done its best to be irrelevant outside of three Saturdays in the late spring unless you work in/cover the industry or live in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. I've gotten the impression that it's fantastically expensive to maintain a racing facility, and while simulcasting and ADW provides plenty of money, private ownership will always look for ways to cut costs.

When I go to the track, I'm generally one of the dozens there. It's a nice afternoon, have a few beers, bet a few races, make a few bucks, lose a few bucks. But I haven't gone in a few years and don't know when I'll go back again. I used to go 15 or 20 times a year. I miss it, but I guess I don't miss it that much.

 

I went to Santa Anita a few times growing up. My first visit to a different track was at Golden Gate Fields. Hard to adequately express what a shithole GGF was next to Santa Anita.

We're in the end times for the horse track.

 

Used to love going to Fort Erie, I think the showcase race was the Prince of Wales Stakes. They would have a 4-5 week session there, then go up to Woodbine in Toronto for the next session.

Arlington Park in Chicago was very nice.

 

Wow. Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields lasted way longer than I would have expected. I just assumed that property would have been sold off long ago.

The radio station in Vallejo where I eventually worked used to do "race re-creations" every evening -- before it signed off at dusk -- with some guy named "Ex-Jockey D. O'Connor." I have no idea whether the bookies who advertised on the show ever made money, although their "tout sheets" were also available at the tracks, for a price.

GGF was right on the water in Albany -- which placed it directly east of the Golden Gate Bridge -- and almost always windy and cold. Even when the sun was out, it was pretty much horse racing's version of Candlestick Park. There were still decent weekend crowds in the 1980s, but by the time I was old enough to wager, the number of horses racing there was dropping pretty significantly. I remember a few races without show bets.

If you didn't waste your money on tout sheets, there were two pretty sound strategies there. The rail was the preferred line, so the first post position won much more often than better horses stuck in the outside gates. And if Russell Baze was on board, you were more than likely to finish in the money. He won over 12,000 races, mainly in northern California, with 36 riding titles at Bay Meadows and 27 at GGF.

 

Visit Oaklawn. Good crowds every race day. Big crowds on the weekends.

 

I remember KCBS would play the stretch calls of races from Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows during the sports segments at :15 and :45. The late Sam Spear, who did a lot to promote the races, also had a daily racing show on the Bay Area's foreign language station.

 

The Fort was always a nice little track. As I recall, the season would open at Woodbine, move to the Fort for a few weeks (the Prince of Wales is the second leg of Canada's Triple Crown), back to Woodbine through the fall and then to Greenwood a track in the east end of Toronto not far from the lake where the horses were second rate, the weather was always awful and the gamblers, almost always including my old man and his brother, who lived out that way, were complete degenerates. You had to be dedicated to trek out there in December looking for winners. Greenwood, long gone now, was also big in the summer for harness racing.

 

Hated having to fix the horse charts agate, but I enjoyed my times at GGF. The land is worth a mint. Portland Meadows closed up this way a few years back.

 

Daily Racing Form is still a thing apparently. Who knew?

 

Went once as a kid. Learned what suffocating stale body odor was like.

 

We need a Batman-like Vin Scully piece on your old man and his brother. For real. I'd read the shit out of that.