Bay Meadows Racetrack - History

History

Built on the site of an old airfield, Bay Meadows Racecourse was the longest continually operating thoroughbred racetrack in California, having been founded on November 13, 1934 until its closure in August 2008. The innovative William P. Kyne introduced pari-mutuel wagering, the popular Daily Double, the first all-enclosed starting gate, the totalizator board and the photo-finish camera at Bay Meadows.

Prior to the track's closure, the Bay Meadows Handicap had been the longest continually run stakes event in California, having been started in 1934. Seabiscuit won this race twice: 1937 and 1938. The track was allowed to remain open during World War II because of its agreement to give 92% of its profits towards the war effort. The track generated more than $4 million for War Relief projects during the war years. Its ability to run during the war accounts for its status as the longest continually operating US racetrack. In 1945, the first racehorse to be transported by plane, El Lobo, was set down in the parking lot.

In 1948, the eventual Hall of Fame jockey, Bill Shoemaker, began his career by exercising horses on this track. He won his first stakes race here in 1949.

In 1954, 1955, and 1956 the track was used for NASCAR.

All of the exterior scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 1956 heist movie The Killing were filmed at Bay Meadows. The track was renamed as Landsdowne for the movie, but the Bay Meadows name is visible in at least one early scene of the movie.

Bay Meadows' racing season began in August with the San Mateo County Fair portion of the meet, which ran two weeks. This was followed by a short break of a few days; until recently this break avoided conflict with the first week-and-a-half of the California State Fair horse race meet. Racing picked up again on Labor Day Weekend (or thereabouts) with the main throroughbred meet, which was split into two parts—one in the fall, the other in the spring/early summer (Golden Gate Fields' meet took place in the interim in the winter/early spring).

Throughout its history, Bay Meadows has also hosted harness and quarter horse racing meets, but due to the low revenue such events generate, those events were not run in the last years of the track. At the end, Bay Meadows focused exclusively on thoroughbred racing. Olden Times, Silky Sullivan, Citation, John Henry, Round Table, and Lost in the Fog have raced here. In 1954, Determine won the Bay Meadows Derby and then went to take the Kentucky Derby. Wild Again ran at Bay Meadows in 1984 and then went on to win the Breeders' Cup Classic. On December 1, 2006, jockey Russell Baze won the fourth race to pass Laffit Pincay, Jr. as the winningest rider in thoroughbred horse racing.

There was talk through the 2000s of demolishing Bay Meadows due to plans to build an entirely new race track near Dixon, California to replace the San Mateo race track and Bay Meadows remained open on a year-by-year case basis. The Bay Meadows Phase II Specific Plan Amendment was adopted by the city council of the city of San Mateo on November 7, 2005 . The plan calls for 1,250,000 square feet (116,000 m2) of office space, 1,250 residential units, 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) of retail space, and 15 acres (61,000 m2) of public parks, as well as a rebuilt Hillsdale Caltrain station near the site of the old Bay Meadows Caltrain station.