Noffsinger Named Prairie Meadows Track Superintendent

Ryan Noffsinger has been named track superintendent at Prairie Meadows. A third-generation horseman, Noffsinger has worked at tracks from California, Arizona, New Mexico and, most recently, in Florida.

“In my 18 years working in various roles with track maintenance, I've been able to gain valuable knowledge at tracks like Del Mar, Turf Paradise, Zia Park, Sunland Park, Gulfstream Park West and Palm Meadows which will serve me well as Track Superintendent for Prairie Meadows,” Noffsinger said.

Prairie Meadows Vice President for Racing Derron Heldt added, “Ryan brings so much to the table with his experience, dedication and love of the industry as a third-generation horseman and having worked in various roles in track maintenance, I feel confident in his abilities to provide a solid and consistent racing surface for the horses, jockeys and racing industry participants that come to race in Iowa.”

Prairie Meadows' live racing season begins with 20 days of Thoroughbred-only racing from May 12-June 17 and is followed by a mixed Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse schedule of 60 race days from June 18-Sept. 30.

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Majority Of Former Calder Race Course Acreage To Be Sold; Churchill Keeping Casino

Churchill Downs Incorporated announced that it has signed an agreement to sell 115.7 acres of land near Calder Casino in Miami Gardens, Fla., for $291 million or approximately $2.5 million per acre. CDI has agreed to sell the land to Link Logistics, one of the premier owners of logistics real estate assets, established in 2019 by Blackstone.

The closing of the sale of the property is subject to the satisfaction of various closing conditions. The Company anticipates closing the sale of the property in the first half of 2022. CDI is planning to use certain proceeds of the sale to purchase or invest in replacement property that qualifies as an Internal Revenue Code §1031 transaction.

Following the closing of this transaction, CDI will retain ownership of approximately 54 acres of the current 170-acre parcel of land on which the Company's wholly-owned Calder Casino sits. The Company may sell 15-20 acres of land along NW 27th Ave. in the Miami Gardens area in the future for retail development.

Beginning in 2014, Churchill Downs Inc. leased the Calder track and a portion of the stable area to Gulfstream Park, which operated a race meet there under the name Gulfstream Park West. The arrangement allowed Churchill Downs Inc. to continue operations of the Calder Casino, with a portion of the gaming revenue earmarked for purses. Races were run without a functioning grandstand and there was virtually no on-track attendance.

Churchill Downs Inc. acquired a dormant jai alai permit in 2019 and secured a favorable ruling from an administrative law judge to transfer the Calder Casino to that permit from Thoroughbred racing. That doomed racing at Calder once the lease expired with Gulfstream Park. The final race was run at Calder in November 2020.

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Florida Legislature Hands Sports Betting To Seminoles, Permits Non-Thoroughbred Tracks To Decouple From Gaming

On the final day of a special session, Florida legislators on Wednesday approved three separate gambling measures that will strengthen the Seminole tribe's dominant position in the gambling market, allow non-Thoroughbred pari-mutuel facilities to decouple casinos and card rooms from their racing and jai-alai operations, and create a five-member Gaming Commission that will replace the state's Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering.

The net result will mean more competition for the state's two remaining Thoroughbred tracks, Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar and Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach. Horsemen fear that will lead to lower purse money for Gulfstream Park and a reduction in racing days, according to Stephen Screnci, president of the Florida Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.

The bill that garnered the most attention is approval of a 30-year compact between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Seminoles, giving the tribe a monopoly on sports betting and permitting the addition of three new casinos on the site of the existing Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, approximately 10 miles northwest of Gulfstream Park. The state gets $500 million a year from the the deal for the next five years.

The Seminoles will have a monopoly on sports betting, both at the seven Florida casinos they currently operate and via mobile applications. Pari-mutuel facilities may enter into agreements with the Seminoles to offer sports betting and split revenue with the tribe.

That portion of the legislation, along with language that could bring a new casino to Miami-Dade County off tribal land, is likely to be challenged in court by gambling opponents who say the bill violates a 2018 statewide ballot initiative that blocked any further expansion of gambling without voter approval.

The bill to approve the Seminoles compact passed 38-1 in the Senate and 97-17 in the House.

The decoupling bill likely will end live racing at South Florida's Pompano Park, the state's only harness track that opened in 1964 and is now known as Isle Casino Pompano, a Caesars Entertainment property. A last-minute amendment in the Florida House version of the bill to exempt harness racing from the decoupling law was stripped in the final version that passed the Senate by a 39-0 vote and the House in a 73-43 vote.

Hialeah Park may also have seen its last race. The historic track that once hosted South Florida's best winter Thoroughbred meet has been operating its casino since 2010 in connection with a Quarter Horse permit that began with competitive racing sanctioned by the Florida Quarter Horse Association. Those races were replaced by match races that were run so that Hialeah fulfilled its casino license obligation to conduct races as defined by Florida statute. That will no longer be necessary.

The idea of acquiring licenses for card rooms and simulcasting by running horse races began in Florida's panhandle when an operation in Gadsden County offered pari-mutuel wagering on barrel races. After a court struck down that as not fitting the definition of pari-mutuel races,  lawyers familiar with state regulations came up with the idea of match races – sometimes involving flag drop starts and slow horses walking or trotting down a dirt path. Remarkably, that passed legal muster and Quarter Horse permits sprung up in several other locations around the state, with farcical races giving operators the legal right to open card rooms and simulcast parlors.

Under the bill passed on Wednesday, all those facilities may now end the sham horse races but continue to operate their card rooms and simulcasting. The same is true of the state's jai-alai frontons, which may also be decoupled. Greyhound racing became extinct at the end of 2020 after Florida voters approved a ballot initiative to ban the sport, so those tracks already have decoupled from their card rooms and simulcasting.

Screnci, the HBPA president, said revenue from slots operations to purses – currently about 20% of total purses – will fall. Currently, he said, horsemen receive about $9 million annually from the Calder Casino, but the contract with owner Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) is set to expire on July 31. CDI previously received state approval to couple its Calder Casino operations with a jai-alai permit it acquired, allowing the company to end live racing at the track that in recent years has been leased to Gulfstream Park's owners and rebranded as Gulfstream Park West. The decoupling bill will allow CDI to stop conducting jai-alai and keep its casino open. Screnci said he has had talks with Bill Carstanjen, CEO of CDI, about the company continuing to contribute to purses, since horsemen were instrumental in Calder getting its casino license.

According to Screnci, the Gulfstream Park slots contribute about $6 million annually to purses, and that could fall as the other casinos in the region (including the former Hollywood greyhound track now known as The Big Easy casino and located just over one mile north) become more profitable.

The tax rate on slot operations run by the Seminoles is 12.5%, Screnci said, with Gulfstream Park paying a 35% tax rate.

Horsemen lobbied in Tallahassee for concessions for Thoroughbred racing, but those talks fell on “deaf ears,” Screnci said.

“We asked for a purse pool, with the decoupled permit holders contributing a portion of their funds now that they won't have to spend anything on racing,” he said. “That didn't get a lot of support. There still could be some appropriations from compact money that goes to the state. That's not dead. This compact doesn't discuss any appropriations of money. We might be able to get in the mix there.”

Screnci said the compact between the tribe and DeSantis permits Miami-Dade and Broward pari-mutuels up to a 5% tax break, but not until 2023.

“It's a bad compact,” he said, adding that even with the addition of new casinos and sports betting the state is only getting an additional $100 million per year compared to the old compact.

His fear is that with Calder no longer an option as a racetrack and purse revenue expected to decline, Gulfstream Park will have to cut racing dates. “We can only go so low (on purses),” he said. “If we lose too many racing days, the lure of year-round racing goes away. That's one way we've managed to keep stables here in October and November, by racing so many days.”

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Florida Horsewomen Come Together To Save Calder’s Resident Barn Cats

When Gulfstream Park West, still known to most as Calder Race Course, closed its gates earlier this month, it was the end of an era. After five decades of the familiar cycle of horses, people, and equipment moving in and out of barns, the last van has carried the last hoof off the property and the tack rooms have been emptied for the final time.

But that doesn't mean that all signs of life were gone from the property.

Madeleine Sciametta and Allison Hickey, lifelong racetrackers who had called Calder home for years, began asking around as the track approached its end – what about the barn cats?

Like most racetracks, Calder was crawling with cats, from pets who arrived with the horses and were tucked into tack rooms at night to completely feral creatures who would come out to be fed and vanish again. Sciametta and Hickey each brought food to separate colonies of cats on different ends of the property and say there were at least four feeding stations, each with its own group of cats. Sciametta said a number of stables would arrive with cats and then leave them behind when they packed up and went to the next track. Then there were people who, knowing feral cats were fed at the track, would dump their household pets still wearing their collars off at the gate, assuming someone else would care for them.

Horses and people were supposed to be off the grounds by April 5. As the date approached, it became clear to Sciametta and Hickey that while lots of people said they wanted to help, no one else was stepping up. On April 15, The Stronach Group's lease of the property will expire and it will be transferred back to Churchill Downs. Most horsemen expect the remaining buildings (the grandstand was leveled in 2015) will be razed once CDI takes possession of the track again.

Buddy, who is known as the “ambassador of Calder” used to monitor morning training alongside the paramedics and sit in a chair in the walking ring during afternoon racing. Randy Halvorsrod photo

“I was looking at all the cats there and knew nobody was going to do anything about it,” said Hickey. “I think a lot of people on the track wanted to help, but they didn't know what to do, or they were busy working. I think Madeleine and I, we see something that needs to be done and we just find a way to do it.”

Sciametta and Hickey waited to begin collecting cats until near the move-out date, not wanting to inadvertently scoop up someone's pet. When it became clear the deadline was approaching, they began setting traps, still not sure what to do with the animals they caught.

“I used to say, I don't want any barn cats, they're always underfoot,” Sciametta said. “But since I started feeding them, you start to get attached to them. Especially the ones in my colony, they were like someone's pet … when it came time to close, I couldn't just put my stuff in my car and drive out the stable gate and leave those cats sitting there, waiting for me to come feed them the next day and not be there.”

The pair began gathering up the cats they could and posting to social media looking for help. Hickey said that at most of the tracks where she and her husband, trainer Bill Hickey, have stabled, there are people who take it upon themselves to feed and fix the resident cat population. Sometimes they're part of a coordinated effort, as is true at Saratoga, and sometimes it's just racetrackers taking cats to the nearest veterinary clinic and paying for a spay/neuter surgery. Miami-Dade County Animal Services had also trapped and spayed or neutered cats, releasing them back on the track through the years. So, while most of the cats had been fixed, a number had other medical needs like dental work or infectious disease testing that would need to be done. Additionally, most of them – Sciametta estimated 70 percent – were feral or semi-feral. She found takers for the friendly cats quickly, but those that couldn't be lap cats were more challenging to place.

Through the power of the Facebook algorithms, Sciametta's call for help reached Randy Halvorsrod, who owns Halvorsrod Farm in Wellington, Fla., and happens to foster cats for Bella's Promise Pet Rescue in Boca Raton, Fla. Bella's Promise is based completely on foster care homes and works with local county animal control centers to source animals to homes. Halvorsrod said that perhaps surprisingly, while there is an overpopulation of stray dogs and cats in South Florida, there is an underpopulation of needy pets in the Northeast, specifically in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Nearly all the animals saved by Bella's Promise are transported north for successful adoptions.

“I knew the scale [of the problem]; I didn't know I could save this many cats with her,” said Halvorsrod. “Rescues usually prefer kittens and pretty cats. That's how it is because everyone wants a kitten. I called the head of Bella's Promise and she said, 'Take them. We'll figure it all out.' The scale is huge but I think at most racetracks you have a huge amount of cats.”

Patty, an older cat, lived in the same tack room for a decade as trainers came and went. Randy Halvorsrod photo

To date, the network of advocates for the Calder cats have trapped and placed more than 50 cats in barn homes, adoptive homes, or foster care. As of this week, Hickey estimated there were only 10 or so left on the Calder property. Sciametta's posts also reached Desiree Barbazon, an Ocala-based realtor who specializes in selling horse farms. Thanks to Barbazon, Sciametta says a large number of the trapped cats went to barn placements in Ocala and Wellington.

“I just put it out there, like hey guys these cats need help,” said Barbazon. “It went viral. I kind of guilted everybody into it – can't you open your heart to one cat? I had people on my Facebook saying, 'I used to gallop horses at Calder, I'll take one.'”

At one point, the demand was so great that Sciametta and Hickey coordinated a ride for 18 cats to the Central Florida area in a specially-outfitted air-conditioned van hired by The Stronach Group to take the kitties to new assignments in barns in Barbazon's area.

For the women who came together to help the cats, it's a fitting way to say goodbye to a property that featured prominently in their racing journeys.

“Everybody talks about the horse community doesn't come together and stand by each other, but in this venture it really worked out,” said Sciametta.

“I walked hots at Hialeah as a kid; Calder was more of a factory type,” said Halvorsrod, who also ran the shed for The Oaks Thoroughbreds at Calder and worked the auctions that were held there through the years. “It was a good, working track. It's sad, the whole thing. I was born and raised in Miami. The track's 50 years old and I'm 66. It's been there the whole time.”

The buildings may soon be gone, but the dozens of adopters will keep their own little piece of life at Calder with them a bit longer.

As the rehoming effort draws to a close, Sciametta and Hickey say the best way the public can help is by donating to Bella's Promise, which took on the significant cost of vetting dozens of cats to prepare them for rehoming. For more information or to donate, visit its Facebook page here.

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