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Battered By Hurricane Laura, Delta Downs Is Back in Business

Take a quick glance at the opening day card at Delta Downs and it might seem like nothing has changed. The fields for Tuesday’s races are full, perennial leading trainer Karl Broberg has seven entered and the feature is a $60,000 stakes for Louisiana-breds that has attracted horses from the stables of Tom Amoss and Steve Asmussen.

But this will be a meet unlike any other at the track that sits just a few miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border. Delta Downs was directly in the path of Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm with winds reaching 150 miles per hour that all but tore the place apart when it hit land on Aug. 27. Since then, there’s been a full-court press to get the track ready for a delayed opening day of a meet that will be conducted during the day.

“There has been a lot of last-minute stuff being done, almost 24 hours a day. There’s been a rush to get ready to race,” said the track’s announcer Don Stevens.

In the days before Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana, Delta Downs was finishing up its Quarter Horse meet, which ended Aug. 22. That gave the track six weeks to prepare for a Thoroughbred meet set to begin Oct. 3. But Laura hit the area with such severity that it was clear the meet could not open on time.

“There’s just a lot of damage and it’s everywhere,” Delta’s Director of Racing Operations Chris Warren said the day after the hurricane hit.

While the barns held up well during the storm, ensuring that the horses still on the grounds stayed safe, the rest of the facility didn’t fare nearly as well. The tote board was demolished, the starting gates were turned over and so severely damaged they had to be replaced and the outside rail was torn apart. The patrol towers were also badly damaged and also had to be replaced. The wiring for the track’s lights was wrecked.

“The light towers were wired above the ground,” Stevens said. “There are wires from pole to pole and they were built in 1973. It destroyed so much of infrastructure. We couldn’t repair them, they were prehistoric. We just pulled them out of the ground and said we will race during the day.”

It could have been worse. Laura was one of five hurricanes to hit Louisiana this year, but the only one that produced significant damage to the track.

The daytime cards will be the biggest change for a track that liked to call itself “America’s Favorite Nighttime Track.” The handle figures weren’t huge, but Delta had a following and it, more often that not, outhandled the competition it ran up against when racing Wednesday through Saturday nights.

With lights unavailable, management had to figure out a way to maximize handle. Rather than trying to compete against the simulcast signals from racing’s top tracks, they settled on a new format, racing Mondays through Thursdays with a 12:55 CT first post. The new schedule will go into effect next week. It is a spot on the calendar where there will not be much competition for the wagering dollar.

“The Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays should be good,” Warren said. “On Thursdays there is a lot of competition. It will probably be so-so on that day. If we can do as well as last year I’ll be happy. I’m hoping we won’t be down any, but really don’t know what to expect.”

“I have talked to a lot of the jockeys and they are alle excited,” Stevens said. “They say the track is in great shape. Most of them, 80 or 90%, are excited about day racing because now they can get to sleep at night. Racing during the day will really be strange and so will the Mondays through Thursdays. I’ve never worked at a racetrack and had weekends off.”

Delta has not set a timetable for when it will repair the lights and return to nighttime racing, but could do so for its summer Quarter Horse meet, run at a time where temperatures soar during the day.

With horses that race on the Delta-Evangeline Downs circuit having nowhere to run since Evangeline ended its meet Aug. 29, the first few Delta cards will consist of nearly all full fields. Ninety-six horses have been entered for opening day and 98 for the following day.

All the dates will be made up. The 84-day meet, originally scheduled to conclude Feb. 27, has been extended to Apr. 16.

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The Week in Review: Before Feasting Upon Thanksgiving Fare, Chew On This

Last week’s headlines had little to do with on-track action. This coming week though, we awaken from the sport’s annual post-Breeders’ Cup snooze with an eye toward decent Thanksgiving weekend racing and on-the-horizon stakes that could add a touch of intrigue to the tail end of the 2020 season.

But before you feast upon the holiday fare, chew on these side dishes that anchored the last seven days of the news cycle (plus a few other tidbits that didn’t land on the front pages):

Last Tuesday we learned via federal prosecutors that more doping charges could be in the pipeline for existing and new defendants in the alleged years-long drugging conspiracy involving now-barred trainers Jason Servis, Jorge Navarro, and a wide-ranging cast of enablers that includes veterinarians.

A key takeaway from that Nov. 17 court hearing is that the lead prosecutor said he now believes that two of the alleged performance-enhancing drug (PED) suppliers were pushing at least some sham pharmaceuticals to Servis that didn’t really do anything to make a horse faster or stronger.

But, the prosecutor added, the government will still be treating those substances as if they were actual PEDs, because the true intent on the part of Servis was to allegedly pump horses full of illicit drugs.

The other main point gleaned from last Tuesday’s hearing is that this case isn’t likely to go to trial until the second half of 2021 because of the voluminous amount of evidence that is surfacing in the discovery process.

So it’s conceivable we could still be batting around this court case over next year’s Thanksgiving turkey.

Meanwhile, on the western front…

The day after the federal doping case hearings, TDN asked California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) equine medical director Rick Arthur, DVM, to identify what under-the-radar substance might be likely to next surface as drug of abuse.

Arthur replied in the Nov. 18 Q&A that “It’s not really under the radar. We are concerned with SARMs [selective androgen receptor modulators]. Those are a class of drugs that have anabolic-like activity, but they are not really anabolic steroids. We’ve seen some of them in testing already [and] that is a group of drugs that I think that we have to pay attention to.”

The following day, during the CHRB’s monthly meeting, Arthur brought up a separate topic about an abused substance that hasn’t been in the headlines lately: Thyroxine.

In introducing a new rule proposal Nov. 19 to curb thyroxine “to the point that it really will not be used any longer within CHRB facilities,” Arthur revealed that since the start of this year, veterinarians on the Southern California circuit alone have reported 287 prescriptions for thyroxine. Incredibly, he added that “over half of the prescriptions” were written for just two trainers, and 80% of that thyroxine was “prescribed by just three veterinarians.”

This despite a CHRB advisory against thyroxine that has been in effect for more than six years warning against its use in horses that don’t legitimately need it because of the drug’s nasty reputation for producing cardiac arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation. Arthur added that “while we cannot assert a cause-and-effect relationship, one sudden death already in 2020 occurred five days after the horse was prescribed thyroxine.”

The CHRB did not disclose the names of the trainers, veterinarians, or the horse that perished after receiving thyroxine. The motion to advance the rule passed, 7-0.

Fixed-odds experiment coming to NJ…maybe

Dennis Drazin, the chairman and chief executive of Darby Development LLC, which operates Monmouth Park and its sports book, predicted to the New Jersey Racing Commission (NJRC) last Wednesday that within five years, fixed-odds betting has the potential to comprise “a significant portion of the handle” in horse racing.

Several commissioners expressed fears about fixed-odds betting cannibalizing the existing pari-mutuel system. Yet despite their repeated lamenting about “last rites” to a model that “will lose out in the end if it has to compete” with fixed odds, no one on the NJRC inquired about what a realistic pricing structure might look like for the new model so it could benefit bet-makers, bet-takers and the horsemen.

Fixed-odds bookmaking, which allows a customer to lock in pricing at the time of the wager, does indeed have theoretical promise to revolutionize, reenergize, and even replace traditional straight wagering in this country (while leaving exotics to be better handled by pari-mutuels).

But when the NJRC voted 4-0 Nov. 18 to approve a fixed-odds pilot program for 2021 that would be limited to bets on out-of-state Grade I races, it didn’t even raise the issue of how the bets would be priced in terms of takeout so that the tracks that fund those races get paid for their product.

Granted, the pilot program wasn’t even the NJRC’s idea. It was handed down by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, which has the authority to regulate fixed-odds wagers. The NJRC was only involved because a provision in the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978 requires approval from the receiving state’s racing commission before wagers can be taken on imported signals.

What’s in a name?

It’s great that a smaller track laden with no-frills charm like Fairmount Park will have its lifespan extended thanks to 2019 legislation in Illinois that granted it the privilege to host slot machines, table games and sports betting.

Not so enthusing was last week’s announcement that Fairmount’s corporate gaming partner is “rebranding” (read: obliterating) the name of the storied oval 12 miles east of St. Louis so it will now be known as “FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing.”

Apparently, 95 years of history are getting tossed into the nearby Mississippi River. Sure, the corporate backer is putting up millions of dollars. But FanDuel wouldn’t be there in the first place if it wasn’t for Fairmount hanging in there long beyond most expectations for it to survive.

In the Nov. 16 press release that heralded the erasure of the Fairmount name, the partners also announced that the company will “fund the renewal and running of the $250,000 St. Louis Derby, the track’s signature event, which has not been conducted since 2006 due to financial constraints.”

Actually, the 2006 St. Louis Derby was the only edition of the race ever conducted. It was the legacy of the old Fairmount Derby, which was run inconsistently between 1926 and 1996, with decades-long gaps between some runnings.

But that one and only St. Louis Derby did produce a good trivia question. Can you name the winner of that 2006 stakes? He was a colt who won six straight races leading up to the GI Kentucky Derby. He ran 12th behind Barbaro, and it was discovered post-race that he had been hindered by an ankle chip. After surgery to repair it, this chestnut was pounded to 4-5 favoritism when returning to his winning ways at Fairmount on a muggy Saturday night in August.

Need another hint? A year later, that colt flourished as a Grade I force, sweeping both the Whitney H. and Woodward S. at Saratoga.

Lawyer Ron is the answer. I’ll be rooting for Fairmount to lure another high-profile horse to the St. Louis Derby in 2021.

I just won’t be referring to that appealing old track by its unimaginative new name.

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Andrew Wyeth’s ‘Over the Hill’ Commands $109,250 to Top Sporting Art Auction

Andrew Wyeth’s Over the Hill, a watercolor painted by Wyeth in 1973 that remained in his personal collection until 2006, brought $109,250, including buyer premium, to headline Sunday’s eighth annual Sporting Art Auction, a collaboration between Keeneland and Cross Gate Gallery of Lexington held virtually on Sunday afternoon.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bidding on this year’s auction of 188 high-quality lots representing fine sporting art, American paintings and sculpture by renowned artists was conducted online and via phone. Gross sales for the Sporting Art Auction totaled $1,625,945.

LeRoy Neiman’s Satchmo, an oil portrait of famed jazz musician Louis Armstrong signed, dated ’61 and inscribed ‘Satch,’ sold for the day’s second-highest price of $103,500, including buyer premium. Bringing the auction’s third-highest price of $72,000, including buyer premium, was Henry Stull’s Domino with Jockey Up, an oil portrait signed and dated 1900. This depiction of Domino, a famed sprinter and breed-shaping sire, was part of the recent Tales from the Turf: The Kentucky Horse, 1925-1950 exhibit at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.

A portion of the auction proceeds will benefit Keeneland’s non-profit initiatives. For more information, visit thesportingartauction.com.

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Woodbine CEO Says Sports Betting Bill Could Devastate Canadian Racing Industry

A bill that would legalize single-event sports wagering in Canada and is now being debated by members of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons would have a disastrous impact on racing, warns Woodbine CEO Jim Lawson. The bill does not allow for the racetracks to be part of the sports betting universe and, perhaps even more worrisome, it would allow non-racing betting sites to take fixed-odds bets on racing without having to share any of the revenue with the industry.

“This is a real threat to the industry and certainly the Canadian government cannot ignore horse racing in terms of this legislation or they risk, ultimately, putting the horse racing industry under,” Lawson said.

Lawson said that under normal circumstances he wouldn’t expect that the bill, as it is currently written, would go very far. But he fears that the Canadian government is so desperate for money to deal with the numerous expenses that have come about with the pandemic that lawmakers might jump at the opportunity to legalize sports betting and the quick fix it represents.

“This bill has gained momentum,” he said. “The economic realities that COVID has created in terms of health and education costs means it will take years to catch up. Other than increasing people’s taxes, and we are taxed enough in Canada, they have to look for alternative sources of revenue and this is an obvious one.”

According to the website casino.org, the bill has backing from members of the four largest parties in the House of Commons–Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Québécois, and New Democratic–and a member from each spoke in support.

With more and more U.S. states legalizing sports betting in the U.S. and with governments everywhere needing revenue, it is no surprise that efforts have begun to legalize sports betting in Canada. But what sets this bill apart from ones in the U.S. that have made sports betting legal is that it lumps fixed-odds bets on racing in with sports betting. The same firms that are given the green light to take sports bets can also offer fixed-odds sports bets and would not be required to turn over any of the money to the sport.

“We are the producers of the content and we are paying the operating costs of running the races and paying the purses,” Lawson said. “We should be the beneficiaries of fixed-odds betting on horse racing. That’s just common sense. You can’t allow someone else to encroach upon our only revenue source. You can’t take away that revenue source by allowing fixed-odds wagering on a product we are producing and pay to produce.”

While allowing outside firms to profit off of Canadian races is bad enough, Lawson said that it would be particularly troublesome for Woodbine to be left out when it comes to fixed-odds betting, which he believes will be successful.

“Look at Australia, where fixed-odds wagering now accounts for 60% of the wagering on horse racing,” he said. “What if that phenomenon were to repeat itself here and we lost 60% of our wagering? It would put us out of business if we didn’t either control or participate in fixed-odds wagering on horse racing.

“Young bettors, for the most part, don’t like pari-mutuel wagering. They find it complicated. They are used to fixed-odds betting on football. They’re tough to convert to pari-mutuel wagering. Your new audience, new gamblers, it’s likely that they are a fixed-odds person.”

Even if the language in the bill is changed to allow the tracks to operate and profit from fixed-odds wagering, Lawson would not see that as a victory. He wants Woodbine to be among the companies that get a cut of the sports betting pie, which, he reasons, will be so large that it will cannibalize betting on racing. He also sees sports betting as a way to end the need for the subsidies the government is now paying to support racing. In Ontario, the government hands out about $100 million a year to support the sport.

“The Ontario government is subsidizing horse racing through a funding agreement,” he said. “If you want to do the smart thing and totally eliminate any subsidy that we get, let us make up for the money through sports betting. We are not looking for a monopoly. We know there are casinos and others that will be able to take sports bets, we just want to be cut in. We deserve it because of our skill set and our technology. You’d be partnering with a company that is well positioned to conduct sports wagering.”

Lawson said that the solution is for the government to go back to the drawing board and come up with a bill that will include racing’s needs.

“We’ve got a pretty valid argument as to why this legislation needs to just pause and then do it in such a way that it protects the horse racing industry and in so doing allows a company like Woodbine to be a participant,” he said. “Not only would that support horse racing, it would support all the jobs across the country.”

Lawson does not think the bill will be voted on until some time early in 2021. That gives Woodbine and other industry leaders a chance to plead their case and get the language in the legislation changed. But there’s no guarantee that will work, and that is what has Lawson frightened about Woodbine’s future.

“The minute we heard about this bill we put up our hands and said, ‘Wait a second, the horse racing industry and the racetracks have to play a role in this,'” he said. “If not, we could have some very serious problems.”

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