SLOTS-RICH PURSES PUT SQUEEZE ON SOME

Small-time trainers who were there for a track when times were bad may not necessarily be rewarded for their loyalty.
by Bill Finley

The recent histories of Delaware Park and Charles Town fall neatly and compactly into two categories. Before and after slot machines. Poverty and prosperity.

In many ways, those two tracks, or any others that have been blessed with the windfalls from slot machines, are eager to forget a past that includes small purses and stables with cheap horses.

But backstretch gentrification comes at a cost. Small-time trainers who were there for a track when times were bad may not necessarily be rewarded for their loyalty.

At the new Delaware Park or the new Charles Town, there may not be races where a small-time trainer’s horse can compete or, worse yet, stall space for slower animals. For a track, it’s a nice problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

“Stalls are allotted based on quantity, quality, balance and the amount of starts you had in the previous year,” Delaware Park racing secretary Sam Abbey explained. “The horses have to run or else they are not productive to the race track or to the owner. The bottom line is that if the horse is standing in the stall, someone is paying for it, usually the owner.

“[Loyalty] has to be considered to some extent, albeit not considered over the other things I just said. A guy could be somewhere for 20 years, but if he’s not running, you must ask the question why. If someone has made, say 15 starts over 140 racing days, that’s what’s relevant. Yes, loyalty is important, but loyalty is a two-way street.”

Abbey had to face these questions this year when it came to deciding who would get stalls.
When stall applications rolled in from trainers like Scott Lake, Allen Iwinski, Mike Pino and Steve Klesaris, there was no cause for hesitation. Each has a large stable with the type of solid horses who fill racing cards. That none of them was a major player at Delaware in the pre-slots days can easily be overlooked. Delaware Park is, after all, a business, and larger fields stocked with a better quality of horse will yield more betting handle, and therefore more profits.

It is the cases of trainers like Doug Hawkins that are harder to deal with.
Hawkins’s contributions to the Delaware racing product over the years were modest. Prior to the introduction of slot machines in 1995, he had been there off and on through the 1980s and early 1990s, usually making somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 starts a meet. After a four-year absence from Delaware, he returned in 2002 and made 27 starts, winning three races.
He applied for stalls at the 2003 meet and was denied. He resurfaced at Mountaineer Park, ironically another track with slots, and was, through June 30, 0-for-18 on the year.

Hawkins believes Delaware Park officials did not properly take into account the loyalty he showed the track during a time when they needed him more than he needed Delaware.
“Times were tough,” the 61-year-old explained. “We were all paying for the stalls. The big guys weren’t there. They were getting ready to go under. I had five horses there in the stakes barn [at Delaware] last year and ran some allowance and claiming races. I even earned the barn of the month award one time. I never left here owing anybody anything. My feed man, my vet, I always made sure that they were always taken care of. I was never a problem like that. I’d been here for 20 years. My horses were always good enough to run here. But now they weren’t.”

Hawkins never brought his beef to the Delaware Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, which may have been a mistake. The DTHA typically assumes an active role in situations such as Hawkins’s. The organization’s executive director, Robin Metz, said that there was a handful of Delaware Park veteran trainers who were notified that they might not get stalls at the 2003 meet. She said her organization went to bat for four veteran trainers who were in limbo and each one was given stalls.

“In the instances where [we have been approached], we have gone to track management, be it (president and CEO) Mr. [William] Rickman [Jr.] or COO Bill Fasy to try to work out agreements, to find out what the problems could be and generally we have been successful,” she said. “Trainers who have been here in the past and have some sort of history with us, they generally know to come to us and that we would try to help them.

“We’re definitely happy with how Delaware management has handled this. There have been no instances where we have gone to them and presented the facts where they haven’t listened to us and we haven’t been able to work things out,” Metz added.
Getting Delaware officials to shed light on the situation is difficult. Neither Rickman nor Fasy returned phone calls. After answering a few questions, Abbey became confrontational and ended the interview.

According to Roger Legg, a former president of the DTHA, the track has a strict rule in place stipulating that a trainer must make a certain number of starts per stall. Otherwise, the stable will not be allotted stalls the next year, a system he believes is too stringent. His take on the situation is clearly different than Metz’s.

“There used to be some accommodation given to people who have been here for a long time,” he said. “That has diminished with each passing year. One of the problems is that Delaware has played musical chairs with its racing secretaries and the new people are less familiar with some of the guys who have been around a long time and are less likely to give them a break. I know there’s logic in a business sense to what Delaware is doing, but it used to be that at least they’d allow an explanation. A guy might have had all his horses get hurt or have too many 2-year-olds, reasons why he didn’t make enough starts.”

When slots arrived at Charles Town on September 10, 1997, Dick Watson, president of the Charles Town HBPA, feared they could cause problems for some of the track’s smaller stables, particularly ones with cheaper horses. He knew that wouldn’t be in the best interests of some of his member horsemen and also didn’t believe that an overnight overhaul of the racing product would serve the track’s best interests. The key, Watson believes, to keeping as many people happy as possible has been to raise purses slowly, in increments. At Charles Town, it is the HBPA which, by and large, decides how the purse account is paid out.

“The horsemen here have been treated the way I wanted them treated,” Watson said. “We started to raise purses incrementally in 1998. They were raised nine times that year and another five or six times in 1999. We were trying to provide an opportunity for all our horsemen to win a couple of races, to make a little money and to get a better grade of stock after things had been pretty dire around here.”

Much to his satisfaction, Watson’s system seems to have worked, at least for now. He said that most horsemen from the pre-slots era are still running at Charles Town and have been able to find a way to stay competitive. One of the keys, he believes, has been his insistence that the track still card $2,500 claiming races, which currently offer purses in the $7,500 range. But he knows that the day may come when the smaller stable cannot compete.

“The $2,500 claimers are the backbone of Charles Town and that’s why we need to keep the people who have those horses in business,” he said. “Some of the horsemen and some of the people running the race track wanted to get rid of these races, but the $2,500 claimers are one of the reasons why we have 10-horse fields and so many other tracks have five and six-horse fields. That’s why business here is so good.

“It’s getting tougher to win a $2,500 claimer here all the time, and the type of horse who could have won one in 1997 won’t win now. The $2,500 claimers run for more than $7,000 and you don’t have to win too many of those races to stay in business. Many of our trainers have been able to upgrade their stock so that they can still win these races, but some haven’t, and they are in a more tenuous position all the time. As the money keeps coming in, at some point it will overwhelm them.”

Watson said that the relatively small claiming prices have also discouraged trainers based in places like Maryland and Pennsylvania, who may otherwise be inclined to ship in for some easy money. They may win, beating a Charles Town-based horse, but face the distinct possibility that their horse will be claimed away from them. Another plus has been the abundance of stall space in the area. With the defunct Shenandoah Downs race track sitting right across the road and operating as a training center, and with another 500 to 600 stalls available at nearby training centers, Charles Town’s horse population is in the area of 2,000.

Randy Funkhouser, a predecessor of Watson at the Charles Town HBPA, agrees that the $2,500 claimers have been a godsend for some of the smaller outfits, but said that doesn’t mean anybody is getting a free pass.

“With the purses available for these cheaper claiming races, it has given trainers an opportunity to upgrade their stock so that they can stay competitive,” Funkhouser said. “If they’re not able to do so or haven’t been able to find owners with the finances to help them, then they won’t stay competitive because these races are tougher to win all the time. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the downside is that some of the people have been forced out of the business. It can happen to someone who just isn’t a good businessman.”

Trying to keep everyone happy at Charles Town is one of Jim Hammond’s jobs. As the racing secretary, he said it is sometimes difficult to balance loyalty issues versus the need to offer the best racing product possible. He credits the local horsemen, who, he said, have done an excellent job staying competitive in the current environment. He worries, though, that it will soon be harder to turn a blind eye to the stable with a small group of uncompetitive horses.
“As we speak, no, I have not had to deny any regular Charles Town trainers stalls,” he said. “But if you ask me the same question in three months you might get a different answer. Last year, I had to cut back a few people on the number of stalls. You hate to be the villain but, in your mind and heart, you know you’re actually doing the right thing for them. Sometimes, they just can’t see through the smoke.

“I cut them back in stalls, but I didn’t want to drop the hammer on them. You never want to tell a guy who’s been here for 25 or 30 years that there’s no place here for him in racing any more. That’s why we’ve tried to deal with this by easing them back [in stalls]. They’ve had seven years to catch up and some haven’t. I think cutting stalls might have been a wakeup call for them.”
It may become even more difficult for local trainers to stay competitive when and if Charles Town expands from a six-furlong to one-mile track. Many larger outfits with classier horses remain reluctant to run on the Charles Town bullring.

In the near future, track managements at Philadelphia Park and Penn National, the latter whose parent company also owns Charles Town, will have to deal with many of the same dilemmas. Both tracks currently offer a brand of racing that will no doubt seem obsolete once slot machines are installed. Philadelphia Park officials have talked of a purse structure that will resemble the one offered at Aqueduct. It is expected that stables from places such as Kentucky and New York will be eager to set up shop at the new Philadelphia Park. Loyalty, said Philadelphia Park CEO Hal Handel, will matter.

“The general idea is for the racing office to review the program we see developing the next year with individual horsemen, so that they have every opportunity to have time to upgrade stock and to understand what the program will look like,” Handel said. “Clearly, horsemen who have been supportive of Philadelphia Park over the years should be given every opportunity to be part of an enhanced program.”

Mike Ballezzi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, has had no complaints thus far with the way track management has dealt out stalls.

“It all begins with the proper philosophy,” he said. “We want to achieve a blend of what’s in the best interest of racing weighed against the horsemen and their ability to make a living.”
That’s not always easy to do. Prosperity is wonderful, as long as you’re along for the ride.