Welcome to San Luis Rey Downs!

5772 Camino Del Rey, Bonsall, CA 92003
Mailing address: P.O. Box 1089
Telephone: 760 414-3273 / fax: 760 758-9994

San Luis Rey Downs

Located in Southern California, San Luis Rey Downs is the only auxiliary training track continuously approved by the California Horse Racing Board since 1984. 

This means that horses can ship from San Luis Rey Downs and run the same day. They are not required to be at the track 24 hours ahead of their races.

Unlike the tracks in the California racing circuit, San Luis Rey Downs is open for training every day, 365 days a year, enabling trainers to develop a permanent home.

Click here to watch our new San Luis Rey Downs TV ads! »

The SLRD Facilities

To request a short CD of SLRD, click here.
For a pictorial visit to SLRD, click here.

There are 500 stalls at San Luis Rey Downs, leased by trainers wishing to have a permanent base for their training and racing operations. 

A directory listing trainers in residence at San Luis Rey Downs can be obtained free of charge by sending an e-mail request to Sandi Moore, assistant manager, at slrdho@aol.com.

Amenities at San Luis Rey Downs include a large regulation-sized equine pool, arena, round pens, stationary training gate, "All Weather Trails," tack shop/feed store, Equicise (free run) machines, saddling paddock, track kitchen, mechanical hotwalkers, an equine scale, Farrier Shop, and pens, and outside paddocks.

The SLRD Clients
Many of the breeders in Central and Southern California use San Luis Rey Downs for the transition between the baby training done on the farms and the high-powered racing of Southern California.

One has only to look at the partial list of champions and stakes horses who have called San Luis Rey Downs home to see the quality of horses who have lived in these stalls and galloped on the track over the years.

Stall space is at a premium at the racing meets. Very few trainers are able to keep stalls at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park for horses that are not racing regularly.

For this reason, more and more trainers are opting for the clean air and quieter atmosphere of San Luis Rey Downs, where they can have all their horses together. It's not unusual to see yearlings going to the track with older horses, especially in the fall of the year.

The SLRD Location
San Luis Rey Downs, in the affluent bedroom community of Bonsall, in northern San Diego County, is easy to find. Here's a map showing just where it is.
 
Schools in the area are of high quality and the community of Bonsall welcomes the agricultural aspects of the training facility.

Because the people working at San Luis Rey Downs are based here year round, they have lost the gypsy aspect of the horse racing business. Many of them own homes in the area and have become active in their children's schools, the churches, and the community.

The Horses of San Luis Rey Downs
Many outstanding horses, including Azeri, Cigar, Sunday Silence, and Fusaichi Pegasus, have left their footprints on the San Luis Rey Downs track. For a partial list, click here.

Four Kentucky Derby winners have begun their early training at the facility (Fusaichi Pegasus, Sunday Silence, Gato Del Sol and Ferdinand).  And for the past two years there were several graded stakes winners, including Horse of the Year Azeri, shipping out to race and returning to their familiar SLRD stalls at night.

The Project Director
Laura Rosier, trainer and secretary of the SLRDHO, is very active as the SLRD Project Director. She is also the Human Resource and Safety Director. This job is as large as it sounds.

There are always numerous projects at SLRD. Laura escorts and enlightens all the tour groups that visit the facility. This includes the 4-H, FFA, busloads of touring guests like the Pasadena Retired Employees, Bonsall Lions, several Chamber of Commerce groups and many more.

As the Human Resource person, she takes care of the health needs of the stable employees by working with the County Health Services and the CTHF (California Thoroughbred Health Foundation). She arranges “English as a Second Language” classes and Bible studies for the workers. She acts as a conduit between the workers and the local schools, the CTT (California Thoroughbred Trainers) and immigration attorneys.

As chief safety person, she has streamlined the recordkeeping and efficiency of the 24-hour security staff required by the CHRB. And she has been able to dovetail the fire and safety regulations with the security staff.

Without doubt, she is a one-woman dynamo.

For photos of Laura Rosier tours and projects, click here.

The SLRD Trails
For photos of the trails, click here.

On the southeast end of the facility, overlooking the seven west-facing barns, a trail system has been developed and is available as a further alternative to the daily grind of galloping horses around the track.

The trails are about 20 feet wide, bordered on the ground by the old wooden track rail with a new white paint job. The surface is covered to a depth of about six to eight inches with wood chip shavings and packed tightly. The horses literally bounce over the ground like a kid in a new pair of tennis shoes!

The trails are rolling with a fairly good grade in some places, giving the horses plenty of exercise as they jog or gallop up and down the slopes.

Trainers find that older, track sour-horses develop renewed interest in their morning exercise when they are pointed toward the trails. The hope is the reduced concussion will prolong the resiliency of the horses' joints by reducing the arthritis so common in athletes that train on the same hard surface on a daily basis.

The base of the trail slopes so as to cause good drainage during rains. This means the trails do not get muddy or slippery and are able to be used during the rainy season when the track is sealed and thus is very hard. Because of this the trails are referred to as "All Weather Trails."

The Ownership
The SLRD Thoroughbred Training Center was one of the many acquisitions by Frank Stronach’s Magna Entertainment Corporation (MEC). He envisioned a place where horses could be trained away from the congestion of the racetracks. Being from Europe, where all the horses ship to race, and having horses based mainly in the east where many horses ship to race, he thought horses could be stabled in an idyllic location and still be successful at the races.

Spreading development, unfriendly government regulations and small-thinking bureaucrats have adversely affected racetracks in the cities across the country. The horses are being crowded into smaller and smaller stabling situations. Stress in horses causes ulcers and disease epidemics, very commonly found in racehorses stabled at the racetracks.

Frank Stronach is a horseman. He knows that variation in training and stabling options are essential to keeping happy, contented, healthy horses. The slogan “Where Real Training Choices Still Exist” has real meaning at SLRD.

In 2007, MEC sold SLRD to the Magna company called Magna International Development to generate funds for the synthetic tracks MEC owns in California. The facility continues to operate in the same first-class way as it did before this sale.


The Management
The day-to-day management of the facility has been in the hands of Leigh Ann Howard since the spring of 2001. She has been intimately familiar with the facility since first arriving as a fledgling trainer in 1975. She is a consummate horseperson, having managed sales consignments across the country, building and managing a breeding farm and training both young horses and older runners.

She has a firm grasp of the needs of the horsemen. She was the president of the once-strong SLRD Horseman’s Organization for several years. During that time, she developed the “Trainers Directory,” which made available brief biographical comments on the trainers at SLRD and contact numbers of the essential support group necessary for a training facility. All the veterinarians, farriers, lay-up farms, bookkeepers, van companies, etc., are listed in the Directory. This Directory was used as the precursor to the popular California Thoroughbred Breeders Association Industry Directory.

Leigh Ann is a past president and current board member of the Bonsall Chamber of Commerce, the current president of the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association (CTBA), a past president and current board member of the California Thoroughbred Farm Managers Association (CTFMA), a past president and past board member of the California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT), a board member of the Edwin Gregson Foundation, a board member of the California Horse Council, the Groom Elite Program and a member of the Animal Science Advisory Council at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

She is pleased to be in a position to help balance the needs of the horsemen with the requirements of the corporate interests that own the track.


 

Scenes of San Luis Rey Downs
 

 
The Thoroughbred Showcase of the West home page.