There’s also Ontario International Airport which is 50 miles from Temecula.
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And Palm Springs is 67 miles. Both PSP & ONT are much easier to deal with than LAX.
IIRC, Ontario handles horse shipping better than LAX.
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That’s because they are significantly smaller.
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I kept thinking Ontario Canada and was SO confused! It’s ok, I Googlied it!
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At the end of the day, I think Santa Anita is a perfectly fine choice for everything except for xc (my personal location preference aside which would be Galway for convenience to free lodging for me).
Only time will tell if they allow for an exception where they truck the horses out for XC, do some modified version on the grounds of Santa Anita, use the somewhat adjacent golf course, or the arboretum.
I know the Olympics have used a golf course before, but it is dependent on the management/ownership willingness. I have seen in some postings that the course is owned by LA county, but what I can find looks like it is privately owned since 2016. Lots of damage by horses and spectators, and the downtime from actual golfing (which in SoCal could represent millions of dollars between repair costs and loss of golfing income) could be a real deterrent from the adjacent golf course.
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Golfers like smooth surfaces and straight lines. Eventers like undulations and curves. It should be possible to weave a horse course through a golf course. It has certainly been done before.
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And a much better use for a golf course, at least in (ahem!) some people’s opinion 
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I get what you are saying, and I both ride and golf. In theory it is a good idea, but there are so many factors that play into taking real estate that is not normally wilderness or equestrian use and converting it for an event the size and caliber of the Olympics.
Like most golf courses have buried irrigation. that irrigation is not buried particularly deep. At the end of the day it is a lot to ask a existing golf course to convert to a equestrian cross country course. If they cut the timeline tight and creation loose it risks the horse and rider safety.
I know it has been done in other locations, but LA is proving itself to being very venerable to payoffs and outside influences.
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Fairbanks Ranch (cross country in 1984) was a golf course, or became a golf course…
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It became a golf course after the 1984 Olympics.
It does frustrate me a bit that horse people be all “just use a golf course”. We’ve all looked at a golf course and thought “what a nice place for a bridle path” but it was bought and developed as a golf course. Somebody put big money into developing it as a golf course. Somebody spends real money maintaining that golf course. Just because people look at it and say “there’s the open space for cross county” doesn’t mean the OC can just take over the space. People who know much more about developing a xc course say it takes millions and years. Even if they find a way to make it cheaper and faster, it’s still months of development and months of repair after to return it to original condition.
I thought LA28 was supposed to be committed to using existing facilities? A xc course is not just temporary stages or bleachers.
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I was wondering about that and looked it up, though @rothmpp beat me to the punch about when it became a golf course because I got distracted by looking at potential jobs and decided I can be a pickle ball instructor because you know what they say…those that can do, those that can’t teach…
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Is pickleball in the Olympics yet? If not, it just seems like a matter of time.
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Side note, upon rereading the Wikipedia page and then a bit of extra googling, Fairbanks Ranch was already planned to be a golf course when used for the Olympics so the 1984 Games were a perfect match of need and space - cleared land but no established course. It looks like at least some of the planned sand traps and lakes were in but construction was planned with the summer Olympics in mind. So no messing up an established golf course and adding in repair fees and lack of ability of members to play, etc. Really just ideal moments came together for this.
Here’s some pictures because I know you all wanted some…
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Imma be the first Chef D’Equipe!
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Thanks for posting that link.
I love how the one police horse got his picture included with all the Olympic horses.
Those jumps do not look the tiniest bit frangible. At all.
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Not frangible and this was real long format with roads and tracks and steeplechase.
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Those pics are so cool! Although, seeing the French or Italian rider get a leg back up after a horse fall…gah!
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Hmm.
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