PLEASANTON — Tuesday marked an emotional final day of training at the Alameda Fairgrounds horse stables and racetrack in Pleasanton — and the beginning of a mass exodus from the more than century-and-a-half old facility where the legendary Seabiscuit once galloped.
Roughneck horse trainers and owners begrudgingly started hauling their horses and gear out of the stables Tuesday morning, clambering to meet an end-of-week deadline to clear out of the grounds.
“This is ridiculous. It’s not enough time. Everyone’s scrambling,” said horse owner Linda Lonnberg. One of her horses bucked and whined as she was loaded onto a trailer Tuesday morning, not wanting to get packed as cargo in a shipping container.
Earlier this year, the California Authority of Racing Fairs canceled all races at county fairs, effectively shuttering horse racing in Northern California.
Jerome Hoban, during a community meeting Monday, announced that there would be no racing at the fairgrounds this year, despite previous rumors of a $2 million plan from two independent horse owners who wanted to pony up funds to run races on weekends. The only chance remaining for racing in Pleasanton is that the same plan might work out next year, though nothing has been officially confirmed.
Horse trainer Floriberta Trujillo, who lives in Vallejo, has 35 years of training experience with her husband, Marcelino Trujillo, who has 40 years under his belt. Their three grown children have all grown up in horse racing and work in the industry, too. They have seen stable after stable in the Bay Area close throughout the last several years. With the closing of the Pleasanton stables, they are forced to relocate with the 10 horses in their care to Seattle’s Emerald Downs track, like many other trainers.
“They’re sending us away without any benefit for us. We don’t have retirement, or any benefits at all,” Floriberta said in Spanish through an interpreter. “It’s really hard to leave. We work as a family, and now we’re going to have to separate.”
She has never been to Seattle before.
“We’re going to be split up, and we’ve never been separated. We’ve always been together. And, Thank god, my children have always had work…My hope is that they don’t end up on the streets,” Floriberta said. “It’s heavy work, but now, to find new work would be hard…at least we had hope to make rent (here.)”
Their son, Manuel Trujillo, who plans to stay in the Bay Area, said he has been left scrambling to make ends meet for his children, who attend school in Richmond where he lives. Meanwhile, their family is hastily trying to find transportation for their horses.
“It’s horrible. I’ve seen Bay Meadows close, I’ve seen Golden Gate close, and now this,” he said. “It’s not enough time…Everybody’s busy and it was a last moment thing.”
Over the past few decades, racing has vanished from the Bay Area. Bay Meadows in San Mateo closed in 2008, and Golden Gate Fields in the East Bay saw its last race in June of 2024, after 83 years of events.
When asked where he would go now that the stables were closing, Hector Rangel, one of the last-ever jockeys to train on the track, said “I don’t know. We’ve got no home, got nowhere to go.”
The clock ticked down as the last 15 minutes of training expired at the track by 10 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s a shame what’s happening to (Pleasanton racing,)” said Melanie McDonald, who has trained at the Pleasanton grounds since 1957. “I think the emphasis is being put on the almighty dollar.”
With just two horses left in her care, McDonald, 86, said she will try one last run at San Luis Rey Downs before likely retiring.
“This sucks,” trainer and owner Jorge Magravilla said in an interview at the track Tuesday. He said he will also be relocating his 15 horses to Seattle to try to start business anew. “It’s not easy. It’s far away from here. But it’s the best option for the work we’re in here.”
Magravilla, who lives in an RV at the fairgrounds, has three kids, with one high schooler in Pleasanton, another in a local college and his youngest at home, just two years old. He worries that he will have to yank them from school in the middle of the year because of the move to Seattle. He will spend the rest of the week making several 15-hour trips up the coast with his five-horse trailer, totaling at least 90 hours on the road.
“We have no choice,” he added.
Many of the low-income, unsheltered workers will be left without jobs and without a place to stay after this week.
“The fair thinks that they’re being OK and doing OK as long as they’re getting services. But we do not have all the services that those people need,” said Shawn Wilson, a spokesman for Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert’s office. “There will be people living under a bridge.”