Pennsylvania slots will be a different game

Pennsylvania—#1 Thoroughbred breeding and racing state in the nation.
It sounds far-fetched, but stranger things have happened.

Philadelphia Park, operating year-round, is on its way toward one of the highest (if not the very highest) purse distributions in the nation.

Breeder and owner bonuses are projected to dwarf those in surrounding states.
Ample opportunities will be available for horses to compete at all levels, with three race tracks (including one to be constructed in the western part of the state).

The slots bill signed July 5 by Governor Edward Rendell is a dream come true for Pennsylvania’s Thoroughbred industry, and it will have states throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, and well-beyond, scrambling to keep up.

“Like a garden waiting to be watered” is how Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association executive secretary Mark McDermott describes Pennsylvania’s Thoroughbred industry in the pre-slots era. The state already has a year-round racing calendar and well-established base of breeding farms and stallions. The irrigation system comes in the form of legislation allowing as many as 61,000 slot machines throughout the state, with a substantial portion of the revenue directed toward race track purses and the breeding fund.

Other race tracks within the Mid-Atlantic region, namely Delaware Park and Charles Town, have been literally saved by the introduction of slots. But the state of Delaware still has no breeding industry to speak of, and Charles Town remains an island unto itself, its community of horsemen deeply conflicted over alternatives for the track’s expansion.

It will be a different scenario in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s two currently operating Thoroughbred tracks, Philadelphia Park and Penn National, are looking for slots to boost them to new levels of success, not hold them back from doom. And regional breeders will look with eagerness on an influx of quality stallions.

Think Pennsylvania will never be on par with the nation’s leading Thoroughbred breeding states? That’s kind of like what a lot of people said about a smallish chestnut colt who tended to be overlooked in the weeks leading up to this year’s Kentucky Derby.