Where Have All The Stakes Horses Gone?

The Week In Review by Bill Finley

We are in the middle of the Saratoga and Del Mar meets, both of which bring together the best horses the sport has to offer. That was the case last weekend. The quality is there. The quantity? Not so much.

There's an alarming trend in racing and it's only getting worse. The 10- or 12-horse field for a stakes race, especially on the dirt, is a thing of the past, no matter the venue, no matter the size of the purse. Even a nine-horse field seems like something out of a different era. There are too many stakes races and not enough horses to fill them. It's really that simple.

Never was that more evident than last weekend.

Saratoga and Del Mar are huge meets for 2-year-olds, with the top barns eager to unveil their next stars as they take their first steps towards Grade I races and the Breeders' Cup.

Del Mar offered the GIII Sorrento S. for 2-year-old fillies on Saturday and the GIII Best Pal S. for 2-year-old males on the following day. The Sorrento had four horses. The Best Pal had four horses.

Nothing wrong with the winners. 'TDN Rising Star' Nooni (Win Win Win), the $1.8-million sales topper at OBS March, won the Sorrento. Trained by Bob Baffert (who else?) she was professional in victory and won decisively. She paid $3. Baffert also won the Best Pal with 'Rising Star' Getaway Car (Curlin), who paid $2.60.

That Baffert seems to train every good 2-year-old in California certainly doesn't help, but it's not Baffert's job to fill races. Where was everybody else?

At least things were better at Saratoga where 'TDN Rising Star' Showcase (Uncle Mo) won an eight-horse race in the GII Sanford S.

On Sunday at Saratoga, there was $1.1 million up for grabs in the GI Fourstardave H. and the GI Saratoga Invitational Derby. Each race drew only six horses.

Colonial Downs rolled out its best card of the meet Sunday, running the big three grass races that were for so long part of the menu at Arlington Park. The GII Secretariat S., with a purse of $500,000 attracted just six horses. The GII Beverly D., also worth $500,000, had just five starters. The GI Arlington Million was also a six-horse race.

What happened at Colonial shouldn't necessarily have been much of a surprise. Kentucky Downs, already an embarrassment of riches, just announced that an additional $3.7 million has been added to the stakes schedule. The GIII Nashville Derby has been bumped to $3.1 million from $2.5 million, making it, for Kentucky-breds, the second richest race run in the state, behind only the GI Kentucky Derby. Total purses for the meet will be $37 million. Seven more stakes at the meet will be worth $2 million and 15 more races will be worth $1 million.

With Kentucky Downs set to open Aug. 29, just 18 days after the Colonial races, what is Colonial supposed to do? They can't compete with Kentucky Downs when it comes to purses, and neither can anyone else.

Unfortunately, the amount of stakes races with short fields is getting worse all the time. There have been 26 graded stakes races run this year that have had fields of five or fewer. Nine of them have been run in California, a circuit that is having a terrible time trying to compete with the ridiculously rich races run in Kentucky, Arkansas and New York. There have been seven graded races run this year with fields of four or fewer. That list includes races as important as the GI Test S., the GII San Felipe S. and the GI Coaching Club American Oaks.

Our best races from a quality standpoint are becoming our worst races from the standpoint of what makes for a good betting race. People don't want to bet on four and five-horse fields, even if they are some of the more prestigious races on the calendar. That's not good for business.

Outside of the Kentucky Downs factor, the problem is that, with the foal crops declining each year, there just aren't enough good horses to go around. The Graded Stakes Committee of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA)  has responded by downgrading dozens of stakes over the last few years. But they haven't gone far enough.

The real solution is to simply get rid of a bunch of these underperforming races. Does Saratoga really need three stakes races for 2-year-olds and three more for 2-year-old fillies? Won by horses like Kelso, Skip Away, Easy Goer, Forego, Dr. Fager and Buckpasser, the Suburban Handicap, currently a Grade II race, has drawn fields of seven, five, five, six and six over the last five years and has been won by some rather forgettable horses. At Santa Anita, for the second straight year, they could only get four horses for the GII Californian Stakes.

Would anybody really miss the Suburban, the California or maybe the Saratoga Special if they simply went away? The answer is obvious, and it is no. Racing secretaries, directors of racing and track presidents need to show some tough love to these races and use their resources elsewhere. The game would be better off for it.

Karl Broberg Retires

Karl Broberg, 53, has trained the winners of 4,902 races and dominated racing at places like Delta Downs since beginning his training career 15 years ago. He was the leading trainer in the country in terms of wins six years running, from 2014 to 2019. But even with all that success, he has decided to move on. Broberg announced on X last week that he was stepping away from training in order to focus on developing horses at his farm.

Broberg, who likes to think outside the box and loves gambling on horses as much as he does training them, told the Daily Racing Form that he also will be working as a bloodstock agent, finding yearlings for clients and himself. He will continue to own some horses and they will be trained by his current assistant Abel Ramirez.

“The claiming game at the majority of the tracks that I have historically run at is gone,” he told the DRF. “I figured it would be a great time to take a step back, work to buy yearlings, see if we can do some pinhooking, or just help get horses ready for other people. In the next few years, you are going to see so many more fall to the wayside. I just want to make sure I'm ahead of it.”