There are no longer pony rides for children or Lost in the Fog bobblehead giveaways. No more food trucks on Saturday or Dollar Days on Sunday. High-stakes races with full fields are rare.
Golden Gate Fields, on its final stretch after nine decades of thrilling East Bay horse racing fans, is no Silky Sullivan, the thoroughbred known for fantastic finishes who in 1957 made up 27 lengths to capture the $25,000 Golden Gate Futurity and is now buried near the 1-mile track’s tote board.
GOLDEN GATE FIELDS: END OF AN ERA
This story, which looks at the 90-year history of the horse racing track, is the first of a three-part series on Golden Gate Fields. In Part 2 our reporters spend a day spent in the simulcast room. Part 3 reports on the uncertain future for the hundreds of employees who lived on site in the “backstretch.”
But even as the Stronach Group ownership closes shop and serious bettors focus on out-of-state races with bigger payouts from the simulcast wagering rooms above mostly empty grandstands, much of the splendor and charm that brought 20,000 racegoers to the track’s 1941 opening still endures today.
“Look around, brother!” extolls a dapperly dressed Brandon White, gazing through sunglasses into the Berkeley Hills on a recent April afternoon of races. The 29-year-old financier from San Francisco wanted to see the track in person before it closes on June 9 and organized a party bus for 32 college friends who are now gathered near the finish line. A businesswoman brings clients to the winner’s circle, which jockeys Frank Alvarado and Alexander Chavez would visit twice this day. A young couple enjoys a section of grandstands to themselves as warm-up ponies escort horses to the starting gates.
Bill Tonsall has come to Golden Gate Fields for more than 50 years since he attended UC Berkeley and purchased his daily racing form at Black and White Liquors on San Pablo Avenue. Surrounded by wise-cracking friends in the simulcast room, the 82-year-old uses a magnifying glass to study the racing docket before scurrying to a television to watch his picks.
“I got a winner, baby!” shouts Kevin Vuong, who’s been coming to the track since 1987.
Tonsall’s grandfather trained horses for “rich folks” in the South and his father was a pioneering Black jockey in Texas. Tonsall briefly got into the racing business himself in the early 1970s, buying a horse named Bruff Ruler who made her maiden start for Tonsall at Golden Gate Fields. The trainer said the horse showed good speed but got excited early in the race and her energy would dissipate toward the finish. “She went off at 32-to-1 odds and blew them away,” Tonsall recalls. “Got all the money back, plus some.” Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker later rode Bruff Ruler to victory in Southern California. “That was icing on the cake.”
Shoemaker won the first race of his legendary career at Golden Gate Fields in 1949, a needed boost after racing was suspended after only five meets during the track’s inaugural season.
If Golden Gate Fields is fading down the stretch, it may have been even slower out of the gates.
Newspapers reported that around 800 fans and celebrities attended an ice cream social for the track’s groundbreaking Nov. 27, 1939. Architect Maury Diggs, who had designed Bay Meadows Racetrack in San Mateo and Fox Theater in Oakland, believed his East Bay track could be the jewel of American racing. Bing Crosby, an avid racing fan, was named to the board of directors for Golden Gate Turf Club, which operated the 130-acre property that straddles the Albany and Berkeley border. Diggs and contractor Jack Casson completed the $2.5 million facility in early 1940 but were denied dates from the California Horse Racing Board, which had been founded seven years earlier when racing was again legalized in the state.
Under general manager Slip Madigan, who had risen to prominence as football coach at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Golden Gate Fields was granted 35 race dates beginning in late December of 1940. However, heavy rains made the track “unsuitable” for racing. The first meet was postponed several times before 20,000 fans flocked from across the country to watch live racing Feb. 1, 1941. Less than two weeks later, though, meets were suspended after it was found that the “base of crushed red rock was coming through the upper cushion” of the track surface, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “Horses running through this strip were having their heels chopped to pieces,” said Jerry Geisler, chairman of the state board.
Stables moved to Southern California, Arkansas and Mexico. Dates allocated to Golden Gate Fields were split between Bay Meadows and Tanforan in San Bruno. Golden Gate Fields went into nearly $500,000 of debt. The track, along with its inherited debts, sold for $1,000 at an auction in 1942. During World War II, the U.S. Navy used the site to repair submarines and house servicemen. Other state tracks were used as Japanese-American internment camps.
A new beginning
In 1946, Golden Gate Fields reopened under Pacific Turf Club, operated by former railroad commissioner Frank Clark. The track continued racing the next year and was featured in Jack Kerouac’s 1957 beat novel “On The Road,” a defining work of the post-war counterculture generation. In the book, main character Sal Paradise and his friend, Remi, lose all their money at the races before hitching a ride back to San Francisco with a Golden Gate Fields official.
The Berkeley Handicap (also called the Golden Gate Handicap) and San Francisco Mile were traditionally the track’s biggest races. In April of 1974, a Northern California-record $2.3 million was wagered at the California Derby meet, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. In the 1984 Golden Gate Handicap, jockey Chris McCarron rode two-time Eclipse Award winner John Henry to a record time of 2 minutes, 13 seconds on the 1⅜-mile grass course. In May of 1987, a single-day Northern California record of $5.4 million was wagered at Golden Gate Fields during the Kentucky Derby. And in 1989, a 2,000-pound buffalo named Harvey Wallbanger outraced a quarter horse named Two Eyed Burt by half a length in a 110-yard exhibition at the track.
Elizabeth Brown first came to Golden Gate Fields with friends in the 1980s, when the track opened its simulcast wagering facility on the third floor. Over the years, though, many of her pals have found other places to gamble. “People like going to casinos now instead of the track,” Brown says. “I prefer to see the live racing. That’s what brings me here. The horses are beautiful.” The Oakland resident now follows the racing form to make her picks, but she used to bet with her heart. “I used to love Ron Hansen,” Brown says of the late jockey.
Hansen was a fan and media darling through the 1980s and early 1990s. A rival of the record-breaking Russell Baze, Hansen battled addiction and accusations of race fixing. One fall day in 1993, Hansen rode eight races at Bay Meadows. That night, he was involved in a high-speed crash on the San Mateo Bridge. He didn’t show up to the track the next day. Some believed he entered rehab. Others suspected the mob killed him. The 33-year-old’s body was found months later in a marsh near Hayward. “He either jumped or someone helped him jump,” believes a gambler in the Golden Gate Fields simulcast room. The coroner couldn’t determine the cause of death.
Shoemaker went on to win 11 Triple Crown races, including four Kentucky Derbies. In 1958, the jockey rode Silky Sullivan at the Kentucky Derby as a 2-1 co-favorite, but finished in 12th place. In 2005, a 46-year-old Baze passed Shoemaker for the second-most all-time victories at 8,834.
Baze, who is now retired in Arizona, accomplished the milestone victory at Golden Gate Fields, fitting since he and Shoemaker made their name under the Berkeley Hills. Baze rode Hollow Memories, a horse trained by Jamey Thomas. “Total professional,” Thomas recalls of Baze’s celebration. “He just walked away. I was making a deal about it. ‘Russell Baze rode my horse!’ ”
In 2006 at Bay Meadows, Baze passed Laffit Pincay Jr. as the winningest all-time jockey. In 2008 at Golden Gate Fields, Baze won his 10,000th race. Eight years later, he retired from racing with 12,842 career wins. Jorge Ricardo of Brazil has since passed Baze.
“ ‘Anything I need to know about the horse?’ ” Thomas recalls Baze asking him before a race. “Meaning, does he like to be in the front, come from behind, an inside horse, outside horse?
“ ‘No, I’m not telling you how to run the horse,’ ” the third-generation trainer responded in deference. “Baze rode a $4,000 horse like he rode a $400,000 horse.”
Tragedy struck the jockey community in 2019 when 23-year-old Shawn Spikes, a San Francisco native, drowned while boating with friends on Lake Del Valle near Livermore. Spikes grew up attending races with his family, learned to ride horses at age 15 and won his first race at age 19 at Golden Gate Fields. “The work paid off,” he said after the win. “I feel accomplished because I didn’t grow up on a ranch. It’s an amazing feeling to have accomplished something like this.”
Jockey William Antongeorgi had a career resurgence at Golden Gate Fields after breaking his ankle when his horse flipped over the starting gate in Philadelphia. He raced for a season at Bay Meadows before the San Francisco peninsula track closed in 2008, making Golden Gate Fields the only year-round circuit in Northern California.
Antongeorgi met his wife at Golden Gate Fields and started a family. He shared locker space with Baze and noticed the famed jockey’s work ethic during early morning training sessions and mimicked his moves during races. “I would try to be right with him because he was always riding the best horses,” said Antongeorgi, who reached 1,000 wins in 2018 and has earned $32.8 million over 20 years of racing, according to Equibase.com. “He was such an experienced rider, always making the right choices.”
Baze’s most famous horse was Lost in the Fog, trained by Hall of Famer Greg Gilchrist. Lost in the Fog won his first 10 races and was the Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s best sprinter in 2005, the year he set a track record at Golden Gate Fields. The horse was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and euthanized a few months later.
A troubled industry
Golden Gate Fields has had five horse deaths through March of this year, according to the state board’s website. Golden Gate Fields replaced its dirt track with a synthetic surface in 2007, as mandated by the board in an effort to improve horse safety. In 2021, animal rights advocates stopped races by lying on the track and connecting their arms with PVC tubes. From July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2023, Golden Gate Fields had 35 horse deaths, second to Santa Anita (38 deaths). State tracks had 82 horse fatalities in 2023, up from 64 in 2022.
Last year, the Berkeley City Council proposed an ordinance that would make it illegal to confine horses to stalls for more than 10 hours per day. Martha Sullivan, of the advocacy group “Kill Racing Not Horses,” said the proposed legislation “showed an incredible amount of foresight” and likely played a factor in the Stronach Group’s decision to close the track last July.
The Stronach Group has not responded to an interview request for this story.
The ownership group previously said the decision to close Golden Gate Fields was made to consolidate its California racing to Santa Anita Park in Arcadia. Most jockeys, trainers and race fans interviewed for this story during a March board meeting in Sacramento, an April race day at Golden Gate Fields and by phone weren’t surprised by the closure, having noticed cutbacks in fan experience and track amenities since the pandemic, during which a coronavirus outbreak at the track infected more than 200 workers. This race season has seen a 25% reduction in racing purses. No promotions or giveaways were listed on the track’s website beyond a Mother’s Day brunch, and four Friday meets have been canceled this spring.
In a March letter to the California Horse Racing Board, the Stronach Group urged the governing body to deny 26 racing dates this fall to Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. “The current model is simply unsustainable,” the letter said of racing in California, where fewer horse breeders have made it difficult to race full fields that attract big wagers. During public comment before the March 21 vote in Sacramento, trainers, breeders and jockeys made the case for Northern California racing. “We want to show that we can make this work,” Thomas said of the Pleasanton proposal. “Give us a shot,” Antongeorgi pleaded.
The board unanimously approved the Pleasanton dates, pending approval of the racing license. After Golden Gate Fields closes in June, many of the hundreds of “backside” workers living on the Berkeley portion of the property – mostly Mexican and Latin American immigrants with ranching backgrounds who clean stalls and feed and walk horses – are planning to relocate to Pleasanton. The Alameda County Fairgrounds proposal is to have backside workers rent RVs, CEO Jerome Hoban told the board. Stalls have been ordered to accommodate 800 horses.
“We’re all friends,” says Thomas, who commutes from Sacramento to Golden Gate Fields on most race days, of the Northern California racing community. “We’ll barbecue together and have dinner together. We’re a family and we want to get along and we want everyone to make it.”
A racing community that knows long odds is now without a home and fighting for its future.
Correction: It was incorrectly stated that Lost in the Fog was buried at the race track.