Same Old Story for Maryland Tracks: No Slots, No Action

Ryan Fogelsonger, a Springbrook High grad, sat outside the jockey's room at Laurel on Wednesday and talked about his trade. "I ride these amazing animals and try to get them to go as fast as they can. There's more to it than just going around in a circle. It's a job so exciting I leave here every day with a rush. What an honor to do this for a living."

Contrast the enthusiasm of the 26-year-old Fogelsonger, who grew up in Silver Spring, with the dire forecasts for horse racing in Maryland and the gloom-and-doom pronouncements that seem to come monthly from Magna Entertainment, the Ontario-based racetrack company that owns Laurel and Pimlico.

"We are extremely disappointed with the second-quarter results," declared Frank Stronach, Magna's chairman, on second-quarter reports that showed that the company had lost more than $23.4 million even though the two Maryland tracks combined for a net profit of $4.6 million for the period.

"Immediate and drastic action is required," Stronach said only weeks after the Maryland Jockey Club, which runs the two area tracks for Magna, announced it was eliminating 11 stakes races at Laurel this fall, reducing purses of three remaining stakes, as well as other purse reductions. And possibly, reductions in the number of days the tracks will operate.

The uncertain future of live horse racing as a major sport in Maryland appears to coincide with the additional opportunities to gamble (i.e., state lotteries, casinos, Internet options), as well as prosperous times at tracks in West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania that offer slot machines and simulcast racing. (Slot machines seem to draw fans to racetracks to bet both the horses and slots, except for dummies like me who can't multi-task).

A week ago Thursday, I was among 25,000 fans at Saratoga enjoying a day at the races (no slots needed there) -- a six-week throwback to a bygone era when horse racing was one of the major sports with baseball, football and boxing. The racing at Saratoga is superb, as is the ambience, rivaled only by Del Mar outside San Diego and Keeneland in Lexington, Ky.

"I've been in the business for 35 years and still get a thrill when I go to Saratoga," said Louis J. Raffetto Jr., the president and chief operating officer of the Maryland Jockey Club. "Nothing will make us Saratoga, but I'd like to improve our product."

How?

"We need cash [the addition of slot machines at the two Maryland tracks] to increase our purses to have about 2,400 horses available to us," Raffetto said. "Our Pimlico meeting in the spring should be short, like Saratoga. We could run four, five days a week the rest of the year at Laurel, with large fields [at least nine horses per race] and put on quality racing."

I sat in a box seat at Laurel on Wednesday next to Hamilton A. Smith, a veteran trainer who had a horse, Spotted Silver, finish second in the second race.

We were the only two people in the 224-seat area. And the rest of the 15,185-seat facility was not brimming with fans.

"It's depressing," Smith said, surveying the scene. "I have to listen to my owners; if they want me to run for bigger purses, I have to go to race at tracks in other states. I prefer to stay here. But horse owners and racetracks have to make money.''