Sunday, May 23, 2010

“Horse Racing Capsules: Calif. racing board allows Oak Tree to move meet” plus 2 more

“Horse Racing Capsules: Calif. racing board allows Oak Tree to move meet” plus 2 more

Horse Racing Capsules: Calif. racing board allows Oak Tree to move meet

Posted: 22 May 2010 05:04 PM PDT

OCEANPORT, N.J. — Attendance and betting soared Saturday for opening day at Monmouth Park.

The track is running a 50-day meet offering a record $50 million in purses this summer through Labor Day. The season got off to a fast start as 17,903 turned out for the opener, a 74 percent increase over 2009. That figure included New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The total handle was $9,357,444, more than doubling the $4,279,438 wagered on last year's opener.

"We had high expectations, and we exceeded them," said Dennis R. Robinson, president and CEO of the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority. "If today's numbers are indicative of what's to come, then we can stamp this a rousing success."

In the first stakes race of the season, Congressional Page ran down the front-runners nearing the wire to win the $100,000 Decathlon Stakes. Carlos Marquez Jr., who later wound in a hospital, was aboard for trainer Michael Trombetta as Congressional Page beat Mr. Fantasy by three quarters of a length. He ran the six furlongs in 1:09.55, paying $6.20 to win.

In the day's second feature, Get Stormy led the entire 1 1-16 miles to win the $100,000 Elkwood Stakes on the turf by 3½ lengths. Eddie Castro rode for Tom Bush as Get Stormy paid $8 to win. The time was 1:40.04

Castro picked up the winning mount after Garrett Gomez was involved in a spill in the seventh race.

Both Gomez and Marquez, hurt when his mount dumped him in the eighth-race post parade, were X-rayed and released from Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune.

Smiling Tiger wins Barrera Stakes at Hollywood

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Smiling Tiger held off Bob Baffert's stalking favorite Concord Point in the Lazaro Barrera Memorial Stakes on Saturday for a gate-to-wire victory at Hollywood Park.

Ridden by Victor Espinoza, Smiling Tiger went straight to the front of the field of nine 3-year-olds in the Grade 3 stakes race. Concord Point gave chase but could never take the lead.

Smiling Tiger won by a half-length, covering seven furlongs in 1:21.34 and paying $7.60, $3.80 and $3.20. Concord Point paid $3.60 and $3, and Domonation paid $4.80 to show.

The son of Hold That Tiger, trained by Jeff Bonde for owners Alan Klein and Philip Lebherz, Smiling Tiger was third behind Baffert's Preakness winner Lookin at Lucky in two races last year.

The chestnut colt has won three of six career races for $183,864 in earnings.

Treat Gently wins Belmont's Sheepshead Bay

NEW YORK — Treat Gently drew away to a 4½-length win over Nehantic Kat in the $150,000 Sheepshead Bay Stakes for fillies and mares on the turf at Belmont Park.

A 5-year-old bred in England, Treat Gently had a perfect stalking trip, sitting second behind the pacesetting Pari in the 1 3/8-mile race. Kent Desormeaux turned her loose at the top of the lane and Treat Gently eagerly took charge for her fourth win in 13 starts. The time was 2:14.09.

Trained by Bill Mott, Treat Gently paid $10.40, $5.90 and $3.70. Nehantic Kat returned $5.10 and $3.20. Bubbly Jane paid $2.90 to show.

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California Horse Racing Board backs Oak Tree on dates

Posted: 21 May 2010 09:57 PM PDT

The California Horse Racing Board passed a motion on Thursday stating that Oak Tree Racing Association holds racing dates for five weeks this fall, and can race at any Thoroughbred track in Southern California if a lease agreement with its longtime landlord Santa Anita Park is not reached.

Oak Tree, a not-for-profit company, was scheduled to race at Santa Anita from Sept. 29 to Oct. 31, but its lease with Magna International Developments, the owner of Santa Anita, was voided by Magna last week.

That set off a series of events last weekend that led Del Mar and Hollywood Park officials to offer their facilities to Oak Tree, in the event that an agreement is not reached between Oak Tree and Magna. The two sides are scheduled to discuss lease terms in early June. Oak Tree officials have stated a desire to remain at Santa Anita.

At Thursday's racing board meeting at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif., racing board officials condemned MID's decision to void the lease. The existing lease was approved by a bankruptcy court in Delaware in late April as part of the settlement between bankrupt Magna Entertainment and MID. The plan would transfer Magna Entertainment's assets -- including its racetracks -- to MID in exchange for eliminating the debt Magna Entertainment owes MID.

Thursday's motion affirmed Oak Tree's right to the dates in 2010, and was approved by a 6-0 vote. One commissioner did not attend.

"It affirms the dates are not Santa Anita's, they are Oak Tree's," the racing board's chairman, Keith Brackpool, said after Thursday's meeting. "If you talk to everybody this thing could go a number of ways. It could stay at Santa Anita."

Brackpool said that Oak Tree's executive vice president, Sherwood Chillingworth, "said that was his board's preference. That would result in a more permanent home for the Breeders' Cup. We want to give assurance to Oak Tree they could go somewhere else."

Brackpool said he expects the two sides to have amicable negotiations on new lease terms. "They both made positive statements," he said. "They look forward to working with each other. I don't think it should have come to this.

"MID looked at this and said we have a short period of time to determine if these are the terms of the lease. They canceled the old one and began discussions on a new one. I don't think they took into consideration perception against reality."

The absence of a lease has affected Oak Tree's discussions with Breeders' Cup about making Oak Tree a permanent, or frequent, host of the popular autumn racing series. Oak Tree hosted the Breeders' Cup in 2008 and 2009.

As the new owner of Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields, MID received a temporary license at Thursday's meeting to operate the current race meeting at Golden Gate Fields and the current simulcasting business at Santa Anita. Board officials stressed that it is illegal for one entity to own more than one racetrack, a rule that had been waived in the past for Magna Entertainment.

Brackpool said the MID's licenses for Pacific Racing Association, the subsidiary that operates Golden Gate Fields, and the Los Angeles Turf Club, the subsidiary that operates the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting, will be discussed at the racing board's July meeting.

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With horse racing in NY in financial trouble, News examines how it got there and how to fix it

Posted: 22 May 2010 05:07 PM PDT

By Jerry Bossert
Daily News Sports Writer

Sunday, May 23rd 2010, 4:00 AM

The sport of kings is in ruins in the Empire State.

New York City Off-Track Betting Corp. is in bankruptcy, while the New York Racing Association is threatening to shut its doors on June 9, four days after the storied Belmont Stakes, the third jewel of racing's Triple Crown, unless lawmakers agree to fund the racing operations.

On Friday, NYRA, which operates the Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga tracks, sent out layoff notices to its 1,400 employees, which are expected to take effect after the Belmont Stakes.

As the Daily News reported yesterday, Gov. Paterson will try one last long shot, sponsoring a bill that would have the state lend NYRA between $15 million and $25 million to help it run the entire Belmont and Saratoga seasons. Paterson remains optimistic that the racing plan will pass.

If a deal can't be struck, the 142nd running of the historic Saratoga meet, which is slated to start on July 23, could be in jeopardy.

It doesn't seem possible.

Once it was impossible to get a seat at the track, even on a weekday, but that was back when racing was the only form of legal gambling in New York, and there were no lotteries or casinos in nearby states.

The money was good, but New York wanted more.

The state government increased its take on winning wagers from 10% in the 1960s to an average of 20% now, taking more money from gamblers' pockets. But the creation of the six Off-Track Betting Corporations throughout the state was the biggest blow to the sport; New York City Off-Track Betting opened its first parlor in Grand Central Station in 1971.

"It created a job program for politicians," says Steve Crist, who was a member of the Commission on Racing into the 21st Century put together by former Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1993-94, and is now the publisher of the Daily Racing Form.

Allowing gamblers to wager on the races off-track seemed like a good idea, but the model was seriously flawed in that it began to pit the tracks against the OTBs. As the OTB parlors took in money, the tracks began to see a decrease in revenue. No other state operates an off-track betting program like New York's, where the tracks have to compete with the OTBs for the same betting dollar.

OTB betting also presents another problem: The money wagered doesn't go back into the sport at the same percentage that a dollar bet at the track does. For example, 3.8% of a dollar bet on a NYRA race at NYCOTB goes to purses and 2.69% goes to NYRA. Conversely, of that same dollar bet at a track, 6% goes to purses and 10% goes to NYRA. The difference ends up in OTB's pocket far away from the tracks.

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