Churchill Downs’ wildly successful experiment with night racing has provided a huge ray of a hope to an industry that desperately needs every shred of good news it can get. The show now moves to Ellis Park in Henderson, where owner Ron Geary is set to go out of business after the upcoming meet due to lack of support from Boss Williams and his sycophants in the state senate.
Ever since he bought Ellis from Churchill, Geary has been warning that he can’t continue to compete against the race tracks and casinos across the Ohio River in Indiana and Illinois unless the state levels the playing field by allowing him to expand his business by adding slot machines to his gambling menu.
He has not been crying wolf. He has been telling the truth. Even a myopic Republican should be able to read the numbers. But either the folks in Frankfort haven’t believed him or they don’t care if Ellis goes under, which would end the year-round state circuit that horsemen and tracks have spent years building.
Once Ellis is gone, what’s next? We already know that owners, trainers, and breeders are leaving Kentucky to compete in states where the purses have been augmented by the proceeds from other forms of gambling. That is another fact that only draws a shrug from Boss Williams and his cronies.
Turfway Park will be the next to go under. It’s half-owned by Harrah’s, one of the world’s biggest gaming operators. The company had planned to stimulate Northern Kentucky’s economy by turning Turfway into a world-class racino (that’s a combination of “racing” and “casino”) that would be a destination site for tourists traveling north and south.
But without the alternative gaming revenue necessary to boost purses and level playing field with the tracks in Indiana and West Virginia, Turfway’s owners (Keeneland is the other half-owner) will have no choice but to sell off the property to another developer – maybe the same one that right now is probably scheming to buy Calumet Farm and turn it into a subdivision next door to Keeneland.
What’s next?
Well, the Courier-Journal ran a front-page story in the Sunday paper about the possible demise of the Kentucky Derby. I’m sure that Boss Williams and his yes men (and women) scoffed and assured each other – and their constituents – that it’s just another example of the Chicken Little syndrome.
But it’s not.
The sky really is falling.
And if we don’t do something to stop it, the Derby could go the way of the NIT, the Cotton Bowl, and the Indianapolis 500, all once-dominant events that have been downgraded substantially. What took Col. Matt Winn and many others 138 years to build could be destroyed by Boss Williams and his narrow-minded cronies in the blink of an eye, relatively speaking.
The Derby is special at least partly because Kentucky is the undisputed horse capital of the world. But if we lose that status – if we lose our other tracks and our farms and our way of life – the Derby will feel the repercussions.
The Triple Crown, of which the Derby is the first and most important jewel, already is far more vulnerable than it was in 1985, when New Jersey’s Robert Brennan shocked the racing establishment by putting up a $2 million bonus for any colt that swept the Cherry Hill Mile, the Garden State Stakes, Kentucky Derby, and Jersey Derby.
After winning the first two, the incredibly fast Spend A Buck went wire-to-wire to win the Kentucky Derby, forcing his owners to make a tough decision: Preakness or Jersey Derby? Tradition or money? Not being a millionaire – most horse owners aren’t, you know – Dennis Diaz opted for the money, which he collected when Spend A Buck captured the Jersey Derby.
It took that turn of events to shake the industry out of its lethargy. It responded by founding Triple Crown Productions, increased the purses for the Triple Crown races, and adding a bonus for a Triple Crown winner. This was enough to repel Brennan’s threat while also providing a cautionary tale about predators who aren’t fazed by tradition.
Now Pimlico, the old Baltimore track that’s home to the Preakness, is in bankruptcy, a sorry state of business from which the New York Racing Association, owner and operator of Belmont Park, has just extracted itself. Whether the suits at Churchill admit it or not, those Triple Crown partners are as important to Churchill’s best interests as is the future of Ellis and Turfway.
Read the Rest After the Jump…
Even as we speak, new versions of Robert Brennan are out there, figuring how to exploit the steady erosion of Kentucky’s racing industry. The tracks and casinos in Indiana can’t be happy about Churchill’s successful night experiment because that kept some of their steady customers in Kentucky.
But they also had to realize that it was only an incidental problem. On Friday and through the rest of the Fourth of July weekend, the usual stream of cars from Kentucky crossed the river to gamble at the casinos in our neighboring state. It is so generous of us to help them improve their schools and build their roads and fund their social services, especially when we’re in dire need of funds for those same things ourselves.
So what’s next? Well, we know that the Maktoum family from Dubai has been trying to establish the United Arab Emitres Derby as a legitimate Kentucky Derby prep race. What if they decide to just work around the Derby and give American horsemen a new option?
Let’s say they buy Pimlico and establish the Preakness as the first jewel in a new Triple Crown. The race would be held in the middle of May and run for a purse of $3 million. The second jewel would be the Belmont Stakes, run in the middle of June for another $3 million. And the third would be…what? Maybe a revised and upgraded Blue Grass Stakes at an expanded Keeneland? Maybe the Haskell at Monmouth?
Maybe a new race in Dubai?
The point is, all options are on the table. Nothing is sacred, including the Kentucky Derby. This is a sport that’s scrambling for survival. And since tradition can’t pay the feed bills, horsemen have to be open to new ideas, no matter how iconoclastic they may be.
So let us all be clear about the one most salient point of all: We continue to turn our backs on Kentucky’s horse industry at our own peril. The same raiders who already have struck us successfully are only going to encourage more raiders with bigger wallets and bolder ideas.
Boss Williams has no guts if he doesn’t leave his ivory tower and show up at Ellis Park on what likely will be the last closing day in the track’s history. He won’t, of course. He wouldn’t let the people’s voice be heard in Frankfort, so there’s no way he’s going to want to hear it in Henderson.
14 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick // Jul 6, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I could write a book refuting much of the hyperbole here, but for now let me just ask you this: Did you watch the 1985 Jersey Derby? Spend a Buck did not “breeze”…he was life and death to hold off subsequent Belmont Stakes winner Creme Fraiche by a neck. If you can’t even get that simple fact right, I question your credibility in the rest of this post.
2 Don Reed // Jul 6, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Billy, you’re fighting a losing battle.
My respect is yours, but you are speaking to the deaf, dumb and blind.
Lightning may strike yet.
God bless.
3 Nick // Jul 6, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I’m sorry but maybe I missed something, but I did not see anything in this report about Spend a Buck breezing in the Jersey Derby.
4 Kevin // Jul 6, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I read Sunday’s article with interest about a competing race on the first Saturday of May . I can verify some trainers would jump at a chance to win a $1,000,000 + purse.on that day. I actually heard a Derby trainer a few years ago state “that if someone had a $1,000,000 race on the first Saturday of May at a one mile and an eighth that he would jump at it in a heartbeat and so would a lot of others” I won’t mention the trainers name but he is big time and has not won the Derby.
5 Earl // Jul 6, 2009 at 8:15 pm
A trainer might jump, but the egotistic owners that pony up millions for yearlings want to be in the Derby.
I think you have taken this a bit too far, Billy. The industry is in trouble, and the legislature is helping it on its way, but the Kentucky Derby is strong enough to take a lot more that that.
6 john greathouse // Jul 6, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Billy
Excellent article and far fetched by no means
btw Patrick…what does Spend A Buck’s margin of victory have to do with the reality of this article? Since you don’t seem to grasp what the article is really about then it is as lost on you as it is on williams
or maybe neither of you care
7 Gabriel // Jul 7, 2009 at 1:11 am
Your histionics make it very difficult to take you seriously:
Strike one - you use Ron Geary’s latest threat to go out of business in an attempt to scare people. Geary cries wolf every time he doesn’t get his way and people that read newspapers should know that.
Strike two - you refer to legitimate business competitors as “predators who aren’t fazed by tradition”.
Strike three - you claim Kentucky gamblers are helping Indiana “improve their schools and build their roads and fund their social services”. Either you’ve never been to Indiana or you’re intentionally overstating the level to which casino revenue helps the state. A brief internet search will reveal that Indiana’s public schools and social services are underfunded. As for the roads - I drove through Kentucky and Indiana back in April. The roads were significantly better in your state than in Indiana.
8 Bob // Jul 7, 2009 at 2:41 am
We can all agree that horse racing in the US is in trouble and desperately in need of an industry-wide effort to get things in order. That said, your piece is pure hyperbole and nothing short of absurd. These kinds of hysterical statements in light of the failed slots bill are doing lots of damage to the credibility of the movement for change.
The Kentucky Derby is America’s premiere race. As long as there is horse racing in America there will be a Kentucky Derby.
9 Jim // Jul 7, 2009 at 9:19 am
hyperbole after hyperbole mixed with emotional plea to save one industry by giving it a monopoly position! The State of Kentucky is facing major financial problems. Why not auction off the rights to casino gambling and let the highest qualified bidder pay the state for the rights to this regulated activity? Dairy farmers are struggling, auto suppliers are struggling, yet the horse industry portrays themselves as the “rightful owners” of casino gambling in Kentucky. Why subsidize any industry? If a company or industry cannot successfully compete, then get out of the business.
10 Patrick // Jul 7, 2009 at 11:39 am
Nick:
Mr. Reed decided to revise his remark about Spend a Buck after I called him on it.
John:
When Reed spouts misstatements and confuses a well-reasoned argument with hyperbole and being a partisan hatchet man, he does your side no favors. That is most certainly an issue as it’s this kind of attitude that helped sink the proposal you and Reed endorsed.
11 Bak Trakker // Jul 7, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Does Mr. Geary know that the casino across the river from his sad race track is in bankruptcy?
12 Michael // Jul 7, 2009 at 12:43 pm
So Speaker Stumbo’s retro Pace Picante Sauce line (NEW YORK CITY) wasn’t xenophobic enough for you Mr. Reed? You had to double down with Dubai and go racist to boot?
Why not just claim that the Maktoum brothers are going to BUY Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. They already have a number of farms in the Bluegrass, so that’s actually more believable. They’ll alternate years: One year it will be the Shadwell Kentucky Derby, and the next it will be the Godolphin Kentucky Derby.
What other non-Breeder’s Cup race in the US had a purse greater than $1m in all of 2008? The answer is NONE.
13 Richard R // Jul 7, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Racing needs subsidies to survive. Period. That being the case, then racing needs to revisit its product and the product’s presentation. Because if it doesn’t do that and get its product into self-sustaining mode then when the subsidies run out (think: food stamps, unemployment benefits) there will be no more. So quit whining about not getting slots and about the mythical “level playing field” and get the product revamped into something that can do more than be a beggar.
14 Brian Malloy // Jul 8, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Billy: I covered racing back then and you are right the ONLY thing that prompted the Triple Crown bonus was Diaz skipping the Preakness. That prompted a resurgence of interest in the series and gave racing a new breath of life. Now we have a fragmented TV schedule (who signs a 10-year-deal!?!) and I can’t even figure out which event the horse racing channels will cover. Maybe all the gloom and doom will finally wake up the powers that be. Keep the heat on!
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