January 23 - Ever since Santa Anita Park officials had a synthetic track installed at the popular California horseracing venue it has been dogged by drainage issues, issues that came to the fore this week and resulted in the cancellation of three days of racing. However, officials are hoping racing will resume today.

Heavy rainfall has been attributed to the track's most recent problems. Between Sunday last week and Thursday this week,? Santa Anita Park was drenched by over 5 1/2 inches of rain, which proved too much for its drainage system to handle. As a result, racing was cancelled on Monday, Thursday and Friday.

For the past week most of southern California has been affected by heavy rain which has obviously not gone down well with horseracing fans. However, as of yesterday afternoon (Friday), the rain started to let up and was expected to be gone by today. So hopefully racing will resume at Santa Anita Park.

This week Santa Anita Park track superintendent Richard Tedesco has had his hands full trying to fix the drainage problem which is reportedly at its worst on the outside part of the track, near the winner's circle. According to Tedesco, that part of the track will require major renovations to fix its drainage issues.

'There's a spot at the winner's circle that's really bad,' said Tedesco on Thursday. 'The whole track is raceable, but that spot has gone far into the middle of the racetrack so I've got to take that out and replace it with new material.' Tedesco and his crew will be aiming to complete this in time for today's card.

All week Tedesco has been using an aeration process to help drain and dry the track which has been fairly successful. 'It's a learning process,' he said. 'I've learned what to do. If I know rain is coming, I'll aerate so it can drain.' Santa Anita Park president, Ron Charles, is confident that racing will resume today.

The feature of today's 9-race card is the $150.000 Palos Verdes Handicap (Gr 2) for 4-year-olds and up. The field comprises Dancing in Silks (CA), Ez Dreamer (AZ), M One Rifle (CA), Paul's Hope (FL), Eaton's Gift (KY), Quietly Mine (KY), Supreme Summit (KY), Kinsale King (KY) and Ventana (KY).