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Canterbury VP Andrew Offerman Joins Writers’ Room

With smaller tracks gradually disappearing over time, it takes a concerted effort to build a fan customer base that can sustain your business in a non-marquee racing state. Minnesota's Canterbury Park is one of those outliers, a track whose management has put in the work to run a profitable enterprise while managing to attract novice fans and satisfy horseplayers alike, all without the buttressing revenue of slots.

Wednesday morning, Canterbury's VP of Racing Operations Andrew Offerman joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland to talk about the track's blueprint for standing out on a lesser circuit. Calling in as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Offerman discussed the track's decision to drop its Pick 5 takeout to an industry-low 10%, what it's trying to do to attract new owners and trainers and how to still bring fans to the track in 2021.

“We've had a couple different forays into takeout reduction,” Offerman said regarding the successful Pick 5 experiment. “We did some more across-the-board cuts a few years ago, and that didn't work as well as the Pick 5 takeout reduction did. Last year, when we were kind of forced to change our business strategy from being really on-track centric to trying to focus more on off-track betting markets, we knew we had to do something to become more attractive, beyond just running through the middle of the week. So looking at our Pick 5 and trying to do something unique with that wager as it continues to grow in popularity seemed like a good opportunity. The results were great. It enhanced our visibility, did a lot for our other pools around those races and really showed us a new ability to generate interest in a pool that ended up averaging around $80,000, which for us is pretty substantial.”

Faced with the difficulty of drawing owners, trainers and horses to a relatively remote part of the country, Offerman laid out some new incentive programs Canterbury is trying out for the 2021 meet, which starts May 18.

“We've always tried to come up with unique things,” he said. “We realized that when you look at the normal areas that race across the country, Minnesota's not necessarily on their map. So we came up with an early-meet incentive program that gives everyone who starts in an open overnight race an extra $1,000 throughout the month of May to try to help offset the costs of shipping, because we acknowledge that most people have a long van ride to get here from wherever they might be during the winter. We also guarantee stipends per starter over the course of the meet. It's tiered by purse level, but starts at $200 and works its way up from there. We've also been able to offer an interest-free loan program for qualified applicants where people can basically sign a zero-interest shipping loan that they can pay back over the course of the summer.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, the writers responded to the reaction from Bill Finley's critical op/ed about horsemen's groups' suit over HISA, and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, analyzed the delinquent Ramseys story and positive returns from OBS March. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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TVG’s Christina Blacker Joins Writers’ Room

With active hands-on experience in two arenas in racing–television and presentation as well as horsemanship–Christina Blacker is one of a handful of people in the industry with that variety of perspective. Tuesday morning, the TVG reporter, analyst and host joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland for an expansive discussion on growing the sport. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Blacker also talked about the triumph of her husband Dan's recent first Grade I winner as a trainer and her I Am Horse Racing initiative.

Reflecting on the top-level success of the Blacker barn's Hit the Road (More Than Ready) in the GI Frank E. Kilroe Mile S., Blacker said, “The challenging thing about training is that you can put in all the time, the blood, sweat and tears, but until you have a horse that really has some ability, I don't feel like a lot of trainers get the chance to show what they can do. I've always believed that Dan would be playing at this level, and that he had the horsemanship skills and the background and was putting in the effort and hard work to deserve this kind of success. But until a horse of this ability came along, he hasn't had the opportunity to show people how he can train and manage a good horse. I think one of the things I'm most proud of with the way Dan has campaigned [Hit the Road] is he pulled back and was patient when he needed to. Now I think you're really seeing that patience pay off. Hopefully his trajectory will continue to improve.”

Asked about the I Am Horse Racing project to educate the public about the sport's people and their care for horses, Blacker said, “The idea for it came from a group of women who are interested and all have investments in the game. We felt that a couple of years ago when the safety issues were so prevalent at Santa Anita, there was so much coverage, and in those reports was a real implication that people in horse racing don't love horses, don't care about horses, aren't treating these horses with the respect that they deserve. So we wanted to try to put something forward that was educational that was out there to say, 'We recognize that there's a problem, that safety needs to be addressed, but look at these thousands of people across the country who are dedicated to these horses.' We wanted people to know that from the top to the bottom, there are people invested in this game because their core passion is the animal.”

Elsewhere on the show, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, hosts Joe Bianca, Bill Finley and Kelsey Riley criticized the lawsuit filed by some horsemen's groups to stop HISA and debated what its implications may be. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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LA Times Columnist John Cherwa Joins Writers’ Room

Los Angeles Times columnist John Cherwa has seen a lot in just a handful of years on the Southern California racing beat, and Wednesday morning he joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to discuss the past, present and future of racing in the Golden State. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Cherwa talked about the progress in Santa Anita's safety record, the top 3-year-olds on the west coast and the effect of last week's protest at Golden Gate Fields.

“I wrote tens of thousands of words on the horse breakdowns at Santa Anita,” Cherwa recalled. “I was on the phone with a source who was at the track when Battle of Midway went down and then it just mushroomed from there. Last week at Golden Gate, you saw where protesters went on the track over some recent deaths there. At that point, there were five deaths. One was a sudden death, which was probably a heart attack. There were only two what we call breakdowns. At a similar point in 2019 at Santa Anita, there were 20. I think a lot has been done [since], mostly I think through pre-race evaluations. If you watch the Los Alamitos races on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, you'll see a lot of scratches, and a lot of those are because of pre-race evaluations. So I think the progress has been immense. However, until the number [of deaths] becomes zero, it's never enough [for anti-racing protestors]. And zero is, in many terms, unattainable number.”

Asked about the challenges to presenting the sport for a national audience, Cherwa said his dispassionate approach to racing has led to some backlash both from within the industry and outside of it, but that having only covered racing for a few years affords him a fresh view of things.

“I get hate mail from a lot of the horse racing people because I cover horse deaths and things like that,” he said “I get threats from the animal rights activists because I'm not covering it enough. I've even gotten death threats from the animal rights people. Frankly, no one is covering that more than I have, not because I want to, but because it is a big story in California. The fact that I'm kind of new to this myself, means that I'm learning along with my audience and I do on a lot of things. I've got like three or four, I'll just call them sources, that I will call all the time to have them explain something to me just to make sure of what I think I know.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, in a jam-packed West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, the writers discussed the first sentencing domino to fall from last year's indictments, the official news of Gulfstream adding a Tapeta surface that first broke on the show back in December, and the Golden Gate protests. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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Mike Stidham Talks Mystic Guide, Godolphin, Arlington On Writers’ Room

With over 2,000 wins and dozens of graded stakes scores on his resume, Mike Stidham has well established himself as a top trainer in this business. But as of yet, his stable hasn't quite found its breakout star–one that can take him to Breeders' Cup glory and maybe even an Eclipse Award or two. That may have changed with the arrival of Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper) in Stidham's barn two years ago, as the Godolphin blueblood has steadily developed into a budding star, fresh off a jaw-dropping victory in the GIII Razorback H. and headed for an engagement in the G1 Dubai World Cup. Wednesday morning, Stidham joined the TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland as the Green Group Guest of the Week to discuss his plans for Mystic Guide, how the Godolphin racing and breeding operation works, the demise of his beloved Arlington Park and more.

“As you can see from his past performances, we took our time with him. We spaced his races,” Stidham said of Mystic Guide's steady progression. “There were a lot of temptations because it had been moved to September to still try to make the Derby. He just always seemed like he was a step or two behind some of the top 3-year-olds last year. So we gave him the time and felt like he had really moved forward late in the year. At that point, again there was temptation to try him in the Breeders' Cup, but we decided to do the right thing and get him ready for his 4-year-old year. We never turned him out, we just lightened up on his training and I felt really confident from a maturity standpoint, mentally and physically, he had gone the right way. So the [Razorback] performance was not surprising.”

Asked about the surging Godolphin racing operation in America and how it operates across several trainers, Stidham commented, “When you look at the stallion power of these horses–Tapit, Hard Spun, Curlin–then you look down and you see mares like Panty Raid, Music Note, it's only a matter of time until they start to do what they're doing. Interestingly enough, the trainers never see the 2-year-olds until they walk into their barn. I know that Jimmy [Bell] makes trips down to Ocala where they're in training, mostly with Eddie Woods, Niall Brennan, David Scanlon, but we don't know anything about what we're getting until we get a list sent to our email. Until they walk into our barn, we've never seen them before. I think they try to somewhat fit horses to the programs that we're running and obviously they've done a great job, because it's working really well.”

Stidham has been a mainstay at Arlington Park in the summer for several years and has won multiple training titles there. But the news is not good for the Chicago-area plant, as it appears Churchill Downs will abandon racing there after 2021. He didn't mince words when asked his feelings about those developments.

“I'm very, very disappointed in the way Churchill has handled Arlington. I think it's total disrespectful to the Illinois horsemen,” he said. “For me, Arlington was like a national park would be for the public, where you cherish it, and for anybody to go in and tear it down and make it into a residential area because it's better for the stockholders shows no respect for the tradition of Arlington or the horsemen who fought for so many years to try to get gaming there to bolster Illinois racing. For them to walk along with the horsemen for all those years acting like they wanted gaming, then finally get it and then just flat turn it down because they got involved with a casino 15 miles away and didn't want the competition, it's just horrible and sad. It's a very sad day in racing to lose Arlington Park.”

Elsewhere in the show, the writers talked to TDN European editor Emma Berry about the Gordon Elliott story, reacted to a big weekend of 3-year-old racing and, in the West Point Thoroughbreds news segment, broke down the implications of the Irad Ortiz, Jr.-Paco Lopez fight. Click here to watch the podcast; click here for the audio-only version.

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