Spokane horse trainer Tim McCanna closes season with win, future of Northern California racing uncertain
Although Spokane thoroughbred trainer Tim McCanna has neared the end of another successful year, Northern California horse racing stands face-to-face with its uncertain future.
McCanna, 62nd nationally in career victories with 2,538, ranks in the top 50 for 2024. Wednesday, he saddled Brother O’Brien to win the final race at Golden State Racing’s fall meet in Pleasanton, California. On a hot streak for a month, the Gonzaga Prep graduate has won 70 times this year.
Brother O’Brien’s triumph may be the last sanctioned race run in that part of the state. Monday, in an emergency meeting, the California Authority of Racing Fairs unanimously withdrew its application for Golden State’s proposed winter and spring season. Scheduled to open Thursday, the meet would have continued until June 10.
Golden State, a consortium of horse owners, trainers and breeders, conducted 25 days of weekend racing on the Alameda County Fairgrounds. GSR intended to replace Golden Gate Fields, Northern California’s last commercial racing venue, which closed for good in June.
CARF board members noted that Golden State’s expenses, an estimated $3.6 million, exceeded wagering and purse projections by at least $1 million. Following the vote, the California Horse Racing Board issued an affirming statement that said, “for now, Pleasanton operating as a training facility, and Southern California running races for horses stabled there would be in the best interests of both Northern California and Southern California.”
It is widely believed that, if the North has no commercial racing, most stables and the humans who support the industry will head south or leave the state. Wholesale migration may endanger the Northern California Fair Circuit’s summer season, and maybe the fairs themselves.
Santa Anita will open its traditional Los Angeles County winter season on Thursday.
“I had a feeling,” McCanna said. “But I never thought they would pull the plug so soon. It’s a 700-mile round trip to Santa Anita and back. I’m lucky enough to have a few good horses that will fit there. So, I’ve got 10 stalls, and I can shuttle some of my horses in and out.”
In Spokane to spend Christmas with his extended family, the industry veteran issued a warning: “If the horses leave (the Bay Area), they’ll never come back, We saw the same thing happen in Washington.”
Santa Anita, Del Mar and King County’s Emerald Downs, which has its own concerns, are the only remaining commercial tracks on the West Coast
McCanna faced Pleasanton’s final days after winning 14 races from only 39 starters. He then took Friday’s first race with All Hallows and finished off the meet when Brother O’Brien, owned by McCanna, his wife, Jan, and David Nunes, rallied from eighth place for a two-length victory.
Named after a Jesuit at Gonzaga, the distance-loving 3-year-old paid $9,20.
For the year, 23% of McCanna’s starters have won, tied for 14th in the country. Fifty-eight percent finished third or better. Both percentages are a career best.
A fixture in Northern California since the late 1990s, McCanna spent the previous two decades winning titles at Spokane’s late Playfair Race Course, Emerald Downs and the former Yakima Meadows.