HORSE RACING: TURF SEASON TURNING TO DIRT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Horse Racing 

ARCADIA - Bad news for everybody who thought Hollywood Park's autumn season was about as exciting as watching grass grow.

They're going to find out what it's like without the grass.

Stuffed between the Breeders' Cup and Santa Anita's glamorous opening, Hollywood Park's short meet has always had one thing going for it - the best turf racing in the nation in November and December.

That's lost, with this week's announcement that the Hollywood Park turf course is unusable for the meet that opens in Inglewood on Wednesday, and it's a disaster for horsemen and horseplayers no matter what the sport's overworked crisis managers have come up with to salvage the situation.

``It's something that'll affect our industry for a long time,'' said trainer Vladimir Cerin, who looked forward to running Willow O Wisp in the Hollywood Derby and Designed for Luck in the Citation Handicap before the annual Turf Festival of grass-course stakes was canceled.

On Thursday, it was announced that Hollywood Park will trim its schedule from 31 days to 27 for the meet scheduled to end Dec. 19 (which days to eliminate has yet to be determined), that the track will use money from the canceled turf races to add 12 to 14 percent to main-track purses, and that the track will use another $166,000 from its canceled turf races to increase purses for turf races at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif.

Those sound like reasonable moves in a bad spot.

Reducing the schedule to four days most weeks and increasing the purses gives Hollywood Park a chance to present main-track-only programs with races drawing more than a handful of horses.

The cutback in days allays Santa Anita's fear that the meat-and-potatoes dirt-track horses will be chewed up at Hollywood Park before the Arcadia track opens Dec. 26.

The enhancement of the turf-racing schedule at Golden Gate gives Southern California's grass specialists somewhere else in-state to stretch their legs.

All the same, there's no minimizing the disappointment for fans and the hardship for Hollywood Park's new owner, Bay Meadows Land Company, which was handed a turf course in need of repair when it bought the property from Churchill Downs Inc. for $260 million in July with the stated intention of racing there at least three more years.

The new management began installing a new turf course over the summer but discovered in test workouts in October that the grass hadn't taken root.

``It's incredible that they could make a mistake like that,'' said Ron McAnally, the Hall of Fame trainer. ``A multi-million-dollar business, and they hire amateurs to do the job.''

So far, no individual has been singled out for blame, the talk being that Hollywood Park turf superintendent John Barrios received questionable advice from consultants.

Turf racing accounts for more than one-quarter of the major-track programs in Southern California - and, with so much European blood, a disproportionate amount of the high-class competition.

The Turf Festival, initiated in 1991 by innovative track owner R.D. Hubbard, grouped the Grade I Hollywood Derby, Grade I Citation, Grade I Matriarch and three other races - worth a total of $1.7 million - for a Thanksgiving weekend of international racing worth watching.

In 2004, the Matriarch and the Citation produced the first Grade I victories for Intercontinental (winner of Saturday's Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf) and Leroidesanimaux (second in the Breeders' Cup Mile).

Now it's the Dirt Festival.

Hollywood Park is adding a pair of $100,000 stakes for 2-year-olds, the Nov. 26 Real Quiet and the Nov. 27 Sharp Cat for fillies. But without the Turf Festival, the meet won't have a Grade II race until the Dec. 11 Bayakoa Handicap or a Grade I until the Dec. 17 Hollywood Futurity.

Presumably, Hollywood Park has other last-minute preparations to make before the Wednesday opener. So get there early and watch the paint dry.

--It's Cal Cup week: The Hollywood news casts a shadow over Sunday's California Cup, the Breeders' Cup-style showcase for top Cal-bred horses, who'll race for $1.325 million in 10 races.

The Cal Cup, which drew 24,450 fans to Santa Anita last year, begins at 11:15 a.m.

The field, drawn Thursday, for the $250,000 California Cup Classic: Devil Badgett (Rene Douglas riding), 15-1; McCann's Mojave (Alex Solis),5-2; Cheroot (David Flores), 15-1; Desert Boom (Roberto Gonzalez), 2-1; Deputy Doc Renzi (Patrick Valenzuela), 6-1; Texcess (Victor Espinoza), 9-2; Mr. Joe C (Martin Pedroza), 15-1, and Carano (Garrett Gomez), 6-1.

This Sunday marks the end of the Oak Tree season. Trainer Steve Knapp, who'll have Rush Country in the Cal Cup Mile and Brite Maneuvers in the Cal Cup Juvenile, went into Thursday's races trailing Jeff Mullins by two wins in Knapp's bid for his first meet championship. Jockey Martin Pedroza has no chance to catch leader Garrett Gomez, but he can hold onto second place, which would be his highest finish anywhere but Fairplex Park.

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OUT OF THE GATE

- Kevin Modesti and Associated Press