Robin Goodfellow’s Racing Tips: Best bets for Friday, January 29
Sportsmail's racing expert Robin Goodfellow dishes out his tips for Friday's meetings at Doncaster, Wolverhampton and Lingfield.
Month: January 2021
Dale Romans Op/Ed: Historical Horse Racing a Game Changer
As a second-generation horse trainer and Kentuckian, my entire life has been spent in Thoroughbred racing. I've seen Kentucky racing at its finest, and I've seen how quickly out-of-state competition can render us increasingly irrelevant. Right now Kentucky is at the top. But it doesn't have to stay that way.
I currently have 50 employees and do business with more than 100 vendors in Kentucky alone. Without Historical Horse Racing (HHR) revenue supplementing the purses for which our horses compete, many of those jobs will have to leave the state, as will our business with all those area vendors.
People forget, but it wasn't that long ago that Kentucky racing was badly hemorrhaging amid regional and national competition for horses. As more horse owners and trainers opted to race at tracks with purses fueled by slots and casino gaming, Ellis Park's summer meet and Turfway Park's winter racing were on life support. Even legendary Churchill Downs and Keeneland struggled with a profound horse shortage. Our breeding farms suffered from an exodus of mares they'd previously boarded, leaving the Bluegrass for states with more meaningful incentives–supported by revenue from racinos and casinos– for horses foaled in those jurisdictions.
First introduced by then-struggling Kentucky Downs in 2011, Historical Horse Racing proved the game-changer for good, reversing the downward spiral for Kentucky's signature industry. HHR is not a subsidy for horse racing. It's an innovative, racing-based product that reinvests in our iconic industry. This is one of those win-win-win situations that has benefitted the whole state. It has sparked significant economic development and creates and preserves jobs.
Purses are the universal language of horsemen. We follow the money. And where our horses go, so go the jobs. American horse racing is not the sport of kings. It's the sport of thousands of stables operating as local businesses employing real people in communities across the country.
Horse racing is an extremely labor-intensive business; you're never going to automate caring for a horse. And that's a good thing. We want it to be labor intensive and give people the opportunity to work in our industry.
Because of Historical Horse Racing and combined with our quality of life and affordable housing, Kentucky is now the mecca for horsemen. Trainers and jockeys on both coasts are increasing their presence in Kentucky, if not making it their primary base. Ellis Park and Turfway's barns are full for their meets, as are area training centers. The horses occupying those stalls reflect added jobs.
Within the short period of time in which it has been up and running, HHR has completely changed the dynamics of racing on a national level, with Kentucky once more at the forefront.
This provides a huge boost for the entire economy of Kentucky, not only horse racing. Just ask the mayors and county judge executives in Henderson and Simpson counties what HHR has meant for their communities. Historical Horse Racing has brought entertainment dollars back to Kentucky, with HHR operations themselves employing 1,400 people in six cities. Our racetracks have invested nearly $1 billion the past 10 years in capital projects with another $600 million planned.
Make no mistake, that will change for the worse if the Kentucky Legislature doesn't act to protect HHR. It needs to follow the simple blueprint the Kentucky Supreme Court provided to address its constitutionality concern.
It is not hyperbole to say three of our five Thoroughbred tracks will close without HHR: Ellis Park, Turfway Park and Kentucky Downs. Harness racing will be history. Jobs will evaporate, millions of economic development and tourism dollars lost.
Whether you approve of alternative gaming or not, it is right here in our market–just across the border in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and not far away in Pennsylvania. The majority of Kentucky's population can get to a casino to gamble within 30 minutes.
Kentucky's horse industry has a $5.2 billion economic impact and employs 60,000 people directly or indirectly. The commonwealth's racetracks pay more than $100 million annually in state and local taxes. Out-of-state money flows into Kentucky's coffers as a result of horse racing and its economic driver, HHR.
Do we want to needlessly sacrifice that?
It's important to have a year-round, consistent racing circuit in Kentucky. Without HHR, Kentucky racing will be an afterthought in a very quick period of time. Legislators must ask themselves: Can we afford that?
The post Dale Romans Op/Ed: Historical Horse Racing a Game Changer appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Presque Isle Plans For 50 Live Race Dates In 2021; Opening Day July 5
Pushed back from its expected May start date, opening day at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Penn. will be on July 5, 2021, according to a notice sent out by the Pennsylvania Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association on Thursday.
Presque Isle, owned by Churchill Downs, Inc., is planning for a 50-day live racing meet this year, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made the addition of more dates uncertain.
“As the pandemic continues, it is very difficult — if not impossible — to project purse revenue resulting from slot revenue,” the notice reads. “We expect to conduct 50 days of racing. We will add days at the end of the meet if purse revenues exceed expectations. Bottom line: We will run as many days as the purse account can support.”
Presque Isle was approved to run four days a week from May 11 to Oct. 22 in 2020, including four Sundays in August, but did not start racing until July 27 due to the pandemic. The track hosted just 50 race dates in 2020, half the 100 dates originally planned.
An update from our Executive Director on the upcoming 2021 @PID_Casino meet… pic.twitter.com/5AVIwUu8PH
— Pa HBPA (@PA_HBPA) January 28, 2021
The post Presque Isle Plans For 50 Live Race Dates In 2021; Opening Day July 5 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
Veteran Always Sunshine Runs ‘A Monster Race’ Off 541-Day Layoff
It was only about an hour before sunset when the sunshine blazed forth on a late winter afternoon at Laurel Park.
Always Sunshine, a Florida homebred of Gil Campbell's Stonehedge LLC trained by Pimlico Race Course-based septuagenarian Edward T. 'Ned' Allard, made his triumphant 9-year-old debut Jan. 24 off a 541-day gap between races.
Guided by jockey Carol Cedeno, his regular rider since the spring of 2019, Always Sunshine recovered from a slight outward bobble at the start of the 5 ½-furlong optional claiming allowance for 4-year-olds and up to press Stroll Smokin into the stretch. It wasn't until midway through the lane when the West Acre gelding out of the Awesome Again mare Sunny Again was able to clear the favored pacesetter and edge away to a 1 ¼-length victory.
“Carol knows the horse real well. She's ridden him a number of times. He can go to the lead if you want him to, but he seems like he runs a much better race if you let him get his act together, and he always fires big if you have him in a good spot,” Allard said.
“Around the sixteenth pole I thought, 'We're not going to get by this gray horse.' I said to Carol afterwards, 'I was afraid you wouldn't get by that horse,' and she said, 'I really hadn't asked him yet,'” he added. “She had a ton of confidence in him.”
It was the 11th career win from 31 starts dating back to his rookie season of 2015 for Always Sunshine, who boosted his bankroll past $650,000. It may have been one of the most satisfying of 2,724 career wins for the 75-year-old Allard, a New England native best known for his work with Hall of Famer Mom's Command.
“I didn't want to start him off in a stake after a year and a half and being a 9-year-old. I wanted to try to find something a little softer, and I thought that was a pretty good spot,” Allard said. “Although, it was still a very competitive spot and he still needed to come up with a good race to beat those horses, which he did. So, I was tickled pink.”
Always Sunshine hadn't raced since earning his fifth career stakes victory in the Senator Robert C. Byrd Memorial Aug. 3, 2019 at Mountaineer. It came just over a year after capturing the Tale of the Cat at Saratoga and well after earning his first-ever stakes triumph in the 2015 Dave's Friend at Laurel. Always Sunshine became a graded winner in the 2016 Maryland Sprint (G3) on the undercard of the 141st Preakness (G1).
“In September of 2019, instead of going to the Tale of the Cat which we had won the year before, I thought the Tale of the Cat came up a lot tougher than the year that I won it,” Allard said. “So, I chose to go for a little less money at Mountaineer. He won very nicely with Carol on him. He came out of the race not 100 percent sound, but nothing major. We couldn't find anything on X-rays, we couldn't really find anything on an ultrasound, but he was definitely off.
“We gave him some time off and put him back in training and the same thing cropped up on him again,” he added. “So, we gave him practically a year off on Mr. Campbell's farm in Williston, Florida and put him back in training. He's been in training for the last five months and he's been training super, so I was real pleased.”
The final time for Always Sunshine's comeback victory was 1:02.91, three-fifths of a second off the Laurel track record of 1:02.20 set in October 2018 by 6-year-old Siralfredthegreat.
“He just needed some time off. It wasn't really a big deal,” Allard said. “He seemed to come out of his race really well.”
The decision on what's next for Always Sunshine will be left up to the horse, Allard said. Laurel's $250,000 General's Stake (G3) at seven furlongs is Feb. 13, a span of just three weeks. The next open stake for older sprinters in Maryland is the $100,000 Frank Whiteley, also going seven furlongs, April 17.
“That's a good question. As a 9-year-old you have to be a little more careful. We'll just have to see how it plays out. Who knows. I might be back in again for [$50,000]; then again maybe we'll look for a stake,” Allard said. “He just ran a monster race, and I haven't completely swallowed it yet. I was hoping he'd run really well and I thought that he would but you still have to go out there and prove it. So often, we're wrong a lot more than we're right, that's for sure.”
Allard, inducted into the New England Turf Writers' Hall of Fame in 2009, has been thrilled with his decision to stable at Pimlico after spending last winter in Tampa, Fla. Based at Delaware Park from spring to early fall, he has two wins, one second and two thirds in five 2021 starts, all at Laurel.
“When Delaware closed, I thought the logical spot was to go to Maryland,” Allard said. “I started in 1970 and I think I've won over 150 stakes and I don't know how many stakes I've won in Maryland, but Maryland has always been very good to me. I'm there and I'm happy and things are going well.”
The post Veteran Always Sunshine Runs ‘A Monster Race’ Off 541-Day Layoff appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
