With the 30th renewal of the Breeders’ Cup scheduled for Santa Anita Park in a few weeks, almost everyone involved in horse racing should take note of the earth-shaking changes coming to West Coast racing in 2014. Some of these changes have been anticipated for several years, specifically the formal closing of Betfair Hollywood Park after its final meeting this fall. Others are reactions to that closing, including longer or differently structured meets for Santa Anita, Del Mar, Los Alamitos, and Barretts at Fairplex Park. There also will be changes to at least one racing surface while new stabling arrangements are being arranged or contemplated. Owners, breeders, trainers, and horseplayers have important stakes in these changes. For insights into what they will mean, we should start by listing what recently was prescribed by the California Horse Racing Board to deal with Hollywood Park’s closing. ◗ In 2014 and 2015, Los Alamitos, in Cypress, Calif., about 30 miles south of Santa Anita, will host five weeks of Thoroughbred racing during daytime hours. The five weeks will be broken up into two different meets: July 3-13 and Dec. 4-21, dates that previously were part of Hollywood’s traditional summer and fall dates. This is a significant change for Los Alamitos, which for many years has hosted year-round night racing, Friday through Sunday, mostly for Quarter Horses, with 4 1/2-furlong races for Thoroughbreds and for mixed breeds in the nightly mix. ◗ Santa Anita and Del Mar also will have dates previously assigned to Hollywood. Santa Anita will open as usual on the day after Christmas this year but will be extended two months past its traditional late-April closing through June 29, 2014. Santa Anita also will offer its usual fall meet from Sept. 25 to Nov. 2. Del Mar will run its traditional summer meet from July 16 through Sept. 3 but will add a fall meeting right after Santa Anita closes. In 2014, that new Del Mar meet will cover Nov. 5-30, but those dates could be altered somewhat in 2015 should Del Mar get the Breeders’ Cup. ◗ Barretts Sales and Racing will host the Los Angeles County Fair dates at Fairplex Park from Sept. 5-21, its usual spot on the Southern California racing calendar. These dates are intended to pick up the slack from the absence of the Hollywood spring-summer meet and fall meet, which will be run for the final time this year, and to entice the Breeders’ Cup to include Del Mar in the BC rotation, perhaps as soon as 2015. That is one reason why Del Mar already has begun a project to widen its narrow turf course to accommodate the 14-horse fields who often compete in BC turf races. The additional racing dates at Los Alamitos are being accompanied by a planned expansion this fall of its current five-furlong track to a circumference of one mile, the same size oval in play at Santa Anita and Del Mar. A Los Alamitos spokesman told the CHRB that the track is “not looking just to fill in a missing link on the Thoroughbred calendar, but to take advantage of the population growth in Orange County, Calif., and raise our quality of racing on a permanent basis.”  With that, Los Alamitos says it intends to host several unidentified stakes previously held at Hollywood. In addition, the CHRB said Los Alamitos has agreed to be part of the potential solution to the imminent shortage of Thoroughbred stabling space, a major problem for California horsemen caused by the Hollywood Park closing. For decades, approximately 1,200 horses have been based at Hollywood Park, but those stalls will disappear when Hollywood closes its stabling area Jan. 31. While Los Alamitos has been a traditional home for some of the best Quarter Horses in the world, track officials say they can stable 700 Thoroughbreds year-round, while as many as 500 could be stabled at Barretts at Fairplex through at least July 1. The CHRB also expects that a similar number can be accommodated at San Luis Rey Downs, a once-thriving training facility in northern San Diego County currently undergoing refurbishment. These stabling arrangements have come to the fore through exhaustive negotiations between various horsemen’s groups and the respective tracks. But for the solutions to stick through at least the next 12 months, they must be formally put into place before Hollywood shuts down as a training facility in January. The fact is that no one really knows if these changes will resolve the multitude of issues brought on by Hollywood’s closing, much less some of the lingering issues that have led to declines in attendance and handle at Southern California tracks during the last decade. For just one example, it is unclear where the money will come from to pay for the improved and expanded offtrack stabling. Typically, such costs are absorbed by a special stabling and vanning fund, but revenue from that source has been in decline while more people continue to bet online and via telephone accounts. Beyond the radical changes and open-ended issues that have left California horsemen with considerable anxiety, horseplayers have their own concerns, some of which will be exacerbated by the proposed changes and some that have been negatively affecting their allegiance to the game in the region. For instance, many horseplayers have complained openly that the Southern California season is too long, or that there are not enough breaks between meets. These problems could have been addressed by the loss of Hollywood instead of the present plan to fill in all the gaps. Some wonder how form will be affected by the extended use of Santa Anita’s turf course and by the potential staleness in racing cards that can occur during a prolonged six-month meet. Others wonder if the plan to enlarge the Los Alamitos oval will include wider turns or only will extend the length of the straightaways, which will dampen the enthusiasm of many owners and trainers to run their better horses there. No one has a clue how Del Mar’s racing surface will play during the cooler fall meet, given how sensitive the synthetic surface has been to moisture, or the lack of moisture, during the hot summer season. If truth be told, numerous horsemen and horseplayers wish that Del Mar would get rid of the Polytrack and replace it with a top-notch dirt track. Horseplayers, including organized groups that have talked of a possible boycott, have been highly critical of the takeout percentages in play for multihorse bets in California. As a remedy, they point to the higher-than-usual handle in the one bet with a lower takeout that has been put into the mix: The Players’ Pick 5, with a low 14 percent takeout and a 50-cent minimum wager. When the bet was introduced in 2011 as an experiment, numerous track officials and horsemen openly predicted that it would fail from lack of interest. Instead, it has produced increasingly higher betting handles. Given the positive results of the 14 percent pick five, which has been replicated in other states, horseplayers wonder why California track officials and horsemen continue to resist suggestions to lower takeouts on other bets. At the bottom line, this is one horseplayer who believes that California has ample reasons to experiment with lower takeouts on other bets – perhaps the artificially high 20-plus percent takeouts on daily doubles and exactas. Even minimally reduced takeouts could inspire positive public relations and translate into increased wagering handle in a great racing state that could use a boost while facing so much disruption.