Fonner Park CEO Chris Kotulak shares slices of life from the Grand Island, Neb., racetrack throughout the 2022 meet in the Fonner Files.
It has been a strange year at Fonner Park. Sadly, and most importantly, longtime track announcer Steve Anderson passed away on May 9.
He was diagnosed with cancer in May of 2021 but fought hard to return for 2022. Steve left the announcer's booth mid-season after calling the Fonner Park races for 19 years. Gary Schaff stepped in as interim announcer and has done a fine job. Steve was a gem of a man.
The EHV-1 equine virus was a major setback and knocked down our terrific average field size number of 9+ horses. Field sizes never recovered from that bad luck. Plus, the demand for Fonner Park to pick up additional mandatory race days not run by the Omaha and Lincoln tracks proved to be as bad as expected.
Hundreds of horses left Fonner Park in April and filling races after the traditional Kentucky Derby closing day has been an awful experience. Part of the brand of Fon is full fields, however our racing in April and May was uncommon and unacceptable.
To add insult to injury, the mandatory Dinsdale Late Pick 5 Jackpot wager scheduled for our big Bosselman Gus Fonner Stakes Day, was hit the day before. The expected $1 million dollar pool went poof – along with significant purse money for our 2023 race meet.
Through it all, the marketing efforts and hard work from staff and horsemen to put on a party each weekend paid off. Every Monday after a demanding weekend, from February through April, the phones were ringing at 8 a.m. with seating reservation requests.
In 2020 Fonner Park became known to the world as The Little Track That Could. Next year we plan to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and put on a better show. And one of these years (hopefully next year) we'll start sweetening our purses with casino revenues. Of course, we have to get the casino built first. Here's looking forward to 2023, when we present our shiny 70th platinum year of racing at Fon.
The post Fonner Files: Wicked, Wonky, And Weird At Fonner Park In 2022 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
