ting on Big Changes At Maryland's
Tracks
The horseracing industry is rounding the turn to an uncertain
future and looking for a winner

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 21, 1999; Page B01

BALTIMORE—It is raining at Pimlico, and the city's gray skyline is a blur
in the distance. From the announcer's booth high above the racetrack, the
three-eighths pole near the far turn is barely visible through the mist.

This could be a problem. But track announcer Dave Rodman carefully
uses colored felt markers to note jockey silks beside the horses on his
racing program. Plus he's got his huge binoculars.

Restless and pacing the plywood platform on which he works, Rodman,
40, has been calling races for 18 years--the last eight at Pimlico--and he
may be the keenest, most faithful observer at the legendary racing venue.
And lately, he says, the future of Maryland horseracing seems as murky as
the view of the three-eighths pole in the rain. "Racing, gosh," he says. "I
don't know what the future is. . . . It's a much-changed world."

Last week, the majority owner of Pimlico and Laurel Park, Maryland's
main thoroughbred racetracks, unveiled a $60 million, privately funded
plan to renovate them and reinvigorate the state's racing industry, which
has stagnated even as the sport's popularity and revenues have increased
nationwide.

Joseph A. De Francis, president of the Maryland Jockey Club, which
operates both tracks, announced plans to--among other things--upgrade
grandstands, improve landscaping and food service, and tear down
Pimlico's venerable but outdated low-rise wooden barns.

The plans also call for adding three off-track betting sites and renovating
existing ones, and for boosting marketing, promotion and customer service.
The Jockey Club already is promoting a program called "Pony Pals" to
bring children to the tracks.

The initiative was part of an effort to broaden horse racing's appeal and to
meet Gov. Parris N. Glendening's demand that the industry modernize in
return for the annual $10 million the state provides to boost gambling
purses.

The governor said he was pleased, and De Francis said the upgrades
would help Maryland racing compete better with other sports and with
racing sites in other states.

Horse racing is a complex and insular sport that several observers said is
probably on the verge of transition as promoters seek to pull in new fans
and push more races into living rooms via cable TV. But the track, a
bastion of men, cigars and wagers, often remains a place where the indoor
air remains stale, most food is pedestrian, and signs in certain areas still bar
"children under 12."

It is a place where nonsmokers get the segregated sections, highly focused
men wave programs at banks of television sets, and handicappers, each
with a separate "system," use a unique lexicon. It is a place where the
notion of more children brought some regulars up short.

"I don't think children should be at a racetrack," Salvatore "Sam" Testa,
73, a retired Baltimore steelworker and longtime racegoer, said last week
between races. "All they do is run around. They don't know what's going
on. . . . They're not in here to bet horses or anything; they're in here to
play."

Thoroughbred horseracing in Maryland, one of the most storied pastimes
in the land, began shortly after the first colonists arrived. The Jockey Club,
founded in 1743, is one of the oldest sporting organizations in the country.
George Washington attended Maryland races. Congress adjourned to
attend. President Andrew Jackson sent horses from the White House to
race.

Pimlico, in a working-class neighborhood of northwest Baltimore, is the
nation's second-oldest horseracing track, after Saratoga in New York
state. Pimlico's annual Preakness--named for a steed later shot to death by
an English duke--is the second event in racing's Triple Crown. And the
Preakness trophy, the $1 million, 139-year-old silver Woodlawn Vase, is
the most valuable in professional sport.

Even Laurel, in Anne Arundel County, a relative newcomer, traces its
lineage to 1911. At one point in the 1940s, there were 10 tracks across
the state.

But competition, consolidation and changing tastes whittled the number of
major sites to Pimlico and Laurel; Timonium in Baltimore County and the
state-owned Fair Hill in Cecil County have but a handful of racing days a
year. Combined attendance at Laurel and Pimlico was 1.7 million last year,
the same as the year before.

Yet racing still employs roughly 16,000 workers statewide, and supporters
argue that while racing is "a mile wide and an inch deep," it constitutes one
of the state's biggest industries and is worthy of government support.

"There are literally dozens of little cottage industries that are associated
with, first, the breeding, and then the growing and the care and the feeding
and then the training of a thoroughbred race horse," De Francis said in an
interview at Laurel last week.

"It starts with the breeding farm," he said. "You have to have a whole
variety of employees. . . . You need farm managers and you need stable
hands and you need guys to drive the tractors and you need accountants
and you need lawyers and you need a whole range of things, and that's just
to have a horse conceived."

Over the years, the industry in Maryland has stagnated, according to a
recent state government commission.

"That doesn't mean that it's losing money or losing ground, but the problem
is that a lot of progress has been made in other jurisdictions," said Stuart S.
Janney III, the head of a New York investment firm and a Maryland horse
owner, who chaired the committee.

Racing in Maryland has now slipped into the second tier of the racing
hierarchy, behind the top tier of tracks in Kentucky, New York, California
and Florida, the commission found.

It has been hurt by competition from the state lottery and from other
sports, the commission found. And it has been hurt by Delaware, where
revenues from track slot machines boost the prize purses and lure horses
away from Maryland, where slot machines are illegal.

"Is there a danger of [Maryland racing] going completely away?" Janney
said. "Probably not in the foreseeable future. But there is a very real danger
that it will be diminished very substantially because others are making much
greater progress."

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But some people are not so worried.

For one thing, "everybody's not going to Delaware Park," said Maury
Wolff, an Alexandria-based racing economist. "There are some Maryland
people going up there, sure. The purses are attractive. It makes it very
attractive for horsemen to race at Delaware, and they do. But the huge
outflow of Maryland horsemen? If you look, it hasn't really happened."

But Wolff agreed that racing is on the verge of change. He and others
believe the change will be brought by specialized television stations that are
starting to broadcast regular racing cards into homes across the country.

Wolff said he expects intense competition among tracks to get on the air,
"and for those that have inferior products, there's going to be less demand.
. . . The second tier is going to be squeezed out very quickly."

But Tim Capps, executive vice president of the Maryland Horse Breeders
Association, which represents 1,000 breeders, argued that Maryland
racing has never been properly promoted, and that TV might help: "It puts
you on people's radar screens."

Meanwhile, as the rain fell at Pimlico, announcer Rodman, wearing a
microphone headset, prepared for the fifth race. "Racing has changed so
much in 10 years," he said as he marked his program, "and it's still
changing.

"Excuse me just a second." He pushed a button on a computer keyboard
that played a recorded version of the trumpet fanfare signaling the imminent
start of the race. Then he flipped his mike switch: "Two minutes to post,"
he announced, his voice echoing over the famous track and the
neigborhood beyond.

"One minute.

"They're nearing the gate.

"And they're off.

"Krystal Celerity, Bold Bluffer showing speed on the inside, Brisa's up
between horses, and Megan's Chance, four-way, now three-way scramble
for the lead . . . "


© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Let the Bettor Beware of Improvement Plan
for Maryland Racetracks

By Andrew Beyer

Sunday, June 20, 1999; Page D13

The "Racing Plan for the 21st Century" that the Maryland Jockey Club
unveiled last week is a document of more than 100 pages, filled with
snazzy color drawings that show how beautiful Laurel and Pimlico will look
in the future. It outlines strategies to bring about "a fundamental change in
the way . . . Maryland thoroughbred racing serves its customers."

The plan also has a more immediate goal. It is being sent to Maryland Gov.
Parris N. Glendening (D) and the General Assembly, who must approve it
before allowing a $10 million subsidy to purses at the state's tracks. The
politicians probably will look at all of those snazzy color drawings and give
the report a passing grade. But as a fan, I give it an F after reading the
report and pondering its contents. It resembles a hastily written term paper
by a poorly prepared student who hopes that some trite generalizations can
fool the teacher into thinking he has done some real work.

When I first read and wrote about the plan, I was appalled because it
expects the tracks' customers to pay for a substantial part of its cost,
through a 1.5 percent increase in the "takeout" from wagers on Maryland
races. This would have been objectionable and unwarranted if Joe De
Francis, the president of Laurel and Pimlico, were going to build the Taj
Mahal of racing. But he has not even focused on his customers' basic
needs.

The problem with Laurel and Pimlico is not only that they are old and
run-down, but that their design is ill-suited to the nature of modern racing.
Like most other tracks, they were built to accommodate fans sitting in a
grandstand and watching horses running around a dirt oval. In the age of
simulcasting, of course, the nature of the game has changed. Maryland
horseplayers bet much more money on out-of-state races than on live
events. As they follow the action on television monitors, many don't see a
living, breathing thoroughbred during the course of an afternoon.

Other tracks have built simulcast theaters designed specifically for their
customers' needs. Patrons at Delaware Park sit in swivel chairs at a desk
with their own television monitor and look at a wall of giant TV screens.

But there is not such a first-class simulcast area anywhere in Laurel or
Pimlico. The once-glitzy Sports Palaces at each track were designed for
other purposes, and don't function well for simulcasting; Laurel's has
become depressingly shabby, anyway. Fans in the grandstand sit in ill-lit
areas, in uncomfortable chairs, straining to follow the action on small TV
screens. From the standpoint of almost every customer, improving the
presentation of simulcasts is priority number one.

Yet in the many pages of the report detailing the proposed improvements
for Laurel and Pimlico, the word "simulcasting" does not appear. Not even
once.

The main improvement for Pimlico is a new outdoor paddock, overlooked
by terraces where fans can watch the horses. De Francis said Pimlico
badly needs aesthetic improvements to make it a proper home for the
Preakness and declared, "The paddock is an important part of showcasing
racing." In view of the Preakness's importance to Maryland, perhaps it is
reasonable to emphasize appearance over practicality at Pimlico.

But the main activity at the Laurel plant is simulcast betting. Yet most of the
money being spent at Laurel is earmarked for other purposes -- for "site
work" (paving the parking lot, reconfiguring storm drains, etc.), for
construction of barns on the backstretch. In the plan there is $1 million
allotted for clubhouse dining rooms, and there is a snazzy color drawing of
a "Grandstand Players Pavillion [sic]" where fans sit at tables overlooking
the track -- a design from racing's bygone days.

The budget includes $1 million over the next five years for interior
grandstand rehabilitation, some of which will go into simulcasting areas.
Vice President Marty Azola said he also will use money from his annual
"unallocated capital budget" for this purpose. But the money is woefully
inadequate, and it won't give Maryland fans anything as good as Delaware
Park, let alone the simulcasting palaces of Las Vegas. The stingy budget is
a sharp contrast with the $2 million that the late Frank J. De Francis spent
in 1986 to build the Laurel Sports Palace, wowing every Maryland racing
fan with his creation.

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Frank De Francis always was attuned to what the customers wanted; his
successors are not. Maryland bettors won't be shocked that they are
largely ignored in the son's grand plans for the future. But if they read his
plan, they surely would be galled by all the lip service paid to customer
service. The report says the tracks will hire a "blue chip senior executive"
to oversee customer service. It will broaden the fan base with "specially
trained customer service personnel that can teach people about the sport
of horseracing." It will hire an expert outside consultant to study how "our
past customer service efforts have fallen short."

These are the same hollow sentiments that Maryland racing executives
have been spouting for a decade. The tracks may be able to fool the state
legislature into believing they are launching a new era in Maryland racing,
but they're not going to fool their own customers. If the principal need of
the customers -- good facilities for watching simulcasts -- was just an
afterthought in a five-year, $60 million plan, Maryland's tracks are going to
be conducting business as usual.

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Testafly Returns to Take Baltimore
Breeders

By Dave McKenna
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 21, 1999; Page D10

BALTIMORE, June 20—On a day best suited for mudders, Testafly
made a successful comeback in the Baltimore Breeders Cup Handicap
today with a romp through swamp-like terrain at Pimlico.

J.D. Brown claimed Testafly in October 1997 for just $14,500, and the
horse and trainer Dale Mills quickly provided Maryland racing with a
wonderful human, and equine, interest story. Testafly, who had won just
one race in 14 starts before joining Mills's stable, went on a tear, notching
five wins, and three stakes victories, in his next eight trips. The most
impressive was an eight-length triumph over Hot Brush over a very sloppy
Pimlico track in last year's Baltimore Breeders Cup Handicap.

But the story of Mills and Testafly lost much of its sheen last August. After
the horse finished third in the Iselin Handicap at Monmouth, a race won by
Skip Away, stewards at the New Jersey track ruled that Testafly had been
given the illegal drug clenbuterol, which can assist a horse's breathing.
Testafly was disqualified, Mills's training license was suspended and their
share of the $500,000 purse returned.

The cloud over Mills and the horse darkened considerably when Testafly,
going off as the favorite, was routed by 27 lengths in the Maryland Million
Classic in October, then finished last in the Hail Emperor Stakes in
December. Mills took Testafly out of training following that race, and kept
him off the track until giving him a chance to defend his crown yesterday.

The rest and relaxation, along with Testafly's fondness for slop, seemed
evident from the start of this year's race. Taking off from the outside post,
jockey Greg Hutton, who has handled Testafly's reins through good times
and bad, took his mount right to the lead along the rail. Edgar Prado and
Praise Heaven stayed with Testafly through the last turn of the 1 1/8 mile
trip. When Praise Heaven dropped off, nobody else in the seven-horse
field came up to contest Testafly.

Hutton put the stick to Testafly at the top of the stretch, and the 5-year-old
son of Deputed Testamony, who won the 1983 Preakness on a similarly
sloppy Pimlico track, did his dad proud with an amazing final furlong. At
the wire, his lead had been extended to 12 lengths over second-place
finisher Rod and Staff.

Testafly finished in 1 minute 49.8 seconds, and paid $12.20.

"Turning for home, he just exploded," Hutton said in the winner's circle. "I
guess he's back."

Brown gave credit for the stakes win to Mills and Mother Nature.

"Dale Mills did a great job getting Testafly back like he was," Brown said.
"The layoff did him great, but he'd been working great for this race. And,
well, I did my rain dance last night, and it was there."

© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Md. Horse Racing to Spruce Up
$60 Million Plan Includes Renovations, Marketing Efforts

By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 15, 1999; Page B01

BALTIMORE, June 14—Maryland horseracing officials today
announced a $60 million plan to renovate racetracks at Pimlico and Laurel
and expand off-track betting opportunities in an effort to revive the state's
stagnant racing industry during the next five years.

Grandstands at Pimlico Race Course and Laurel Park would get upgrades,
new food courts and nicer landscaping. Outdated and crumbling barns at
Pimlico would be torn down to make way for more parking and be rebuilt
elsewhere. Marketing efforts would be redoubled.

The overhaul is part of a larger campaign to help the facilities compete with
an increasingly crowded field of betting and sports activities in the region,
including the state lottery and all its related games, slot machines at
Delaware horseracing tracks, and new football, baseball and basketball
venues in Baltimore and Washington.

The proposal is the result of a directive by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D)
and the state legislature calling for better management and marketing and a
new vision for racing's future. State leaders were so adamant that the
industry think long-term, they tied $10 million worth of state aid to boost
horseracing purses to the Maryland Jockey Club's delivery of the plan.

"We have to move forward because our list of competitors is moving
ahead," said Joseph A. De Francis, president and chief executive of the
Jockey Club, which owns Pimlico and Laurel. "This plan allows us to
compete more effectively with all of them."

The plan must be approved by state leaders, but Glendening's initial
reaction was positive. Among other things, the plan calls for a new senior
executive to oversee marketing, promotions and customer service, and a
$5 million renovation and expansion of off-track betting locations. At least
three new sites would be added statewide.

"This plan . . . is a significant, positive step forward," Glendening, who is on
a European trade mission, said in a prepared statement. "Improving the
appearance and atmosphere of Pimlico is good for the track, good for the
neighborhood, and good for horse breeding, training and racing
community. . . . Horse racing in Maryland once again has the opportunity
to offer first-class facilities, celebrated races and premier events."

At today's news conference, De Francis reiterated that he has given up his
attempt to bring slots to Maryland racetracks. De Francis backed
Glendening's rivals in last fall's gubernatorial election, contending that slot
machines were imperative to keep the state racing industry viable.

But Glendening, an opponent of slots, exacted a pledge from De Francis
that the track owner would drop his crusade for slots in exchange for
receiving state dollars to enhance purses. Pressed on the issue today, De
Francis said simply: "The slots issue is off the table."

In addition to track renovations and more spending on marketing, De
Francis announced a new agreement between the thoroughbred and
harness racetrack owners that calls for the groups -- which have feuded
often -- to share all racing profits. Currently, the thoroughbred industry
runs daytime activities and the standardbred association operates nighttime
races, and they do not share revenue.

"Now we will be real partners for the first time," De Francis said.

Horse racing is a $700 million-a-year industry in Maryland and employs
about 17,000 people. But growth in the industry has been stagnant in
recent years, and the industry has become more reliant on the state to
supplement racing purses as a way to keep the industry solvent.

"Without the state purse subsidy, the industry would be at a tremendous
disadvantage and it would be difficult for us to compete," said Wayne W.
Wright, executive secretary of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's
Association Inc., which represents 3,000 owners and trainers across the
state.

Just more than half of the $60 million price tag would be paid by the
Maryland Jockey Club, and the rest would be financed through the state
and paid off from racing industry revenue.

De Francis said plans for the renovations and management of the facilities
should be complete by 2002. And Glendening said state leaders would be
watching.

"Future state commitments will depend on actual progress on renovations,
quality management, and effective, sustained marketing and promotions
effort," he said in his statement.


© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

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