Golden Gate Presents Unique All-Turf Card May 31

Golden Gate Fields is doing something outside the box May 31.

After a season of good weather—relative to Bay Area standards, at least—the Golden Gate turf course is in good shape. And with the meet coming to an end June 10, with no turf options for upcoming fair-meet stops at Pleasanton and Sacramento (Santa Rosa is the only fair site with a grass course, and begins its two-week meet in August), a conclusion was reached.

Why not use it?

So, Golden Gate will run a card with all turf races Thursday.

"It was a culmination of a few things," said David Duggan, vice president and general manager of Golden Gate. "Our turf races have been well-received, and the turf track is very mature and takes racing well. We've had good weather, we get a great sea breeze, it holds moisture well, and it rides really well."

Duggan said turf course superintendent Hugo Sandoval is so attentive to the Golden Gate grass, "sometimes I think he's treating it like Wimbledon."

"My thought process on it was, if we've got it, we've got to use it, and we've got to use it as much as we can," Duggan said.

The seven-race card—all claiming races—features six-horse fields in the first five contests (with seven horses in the sixth and 11 in the seventh), but the shorter fields can be attributed to racing for five consecutive days on a holiday week and the ever-present issue of low horse numbers in the Golden State.

"I had hoped for more (entries), but we're just coming off five straight days, and we had very good races over those five days," said Duggan, who joined Golden Gate in January. "We've had increased field size after some difficult years. We've gained momentum and the meet ends June 10, so why not go out with a bang and run as many as we can on the turf? (Racing secretary Patrick Mackey) and I looked at the calendar, and said, 'We can do it.'"

And will an all-turf card be an option for the future?

"I would very much like to do it again, and we'll look at how we're fixed in August," Duggan said of the summer meet for the track on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. "We don't want to reinvent the wheel, but we'd like to continue to make progress in Northern California."