Sunday, January 23, 2005 Updated: January 24, 1:24 PM ET
Oaklawn offers a trip back in time
By Bill Finley Special to ESPN.com
Be it Aqueduct, Santa Anita, Gulfstream, the Fair Grounds or just about anyplace else that runs this time of year, it's the rare day that the on-track crowd amounts to anything more than a pitiful number. Racetracks have become television studios, where a product is created and beamed around the country to people sitting in a simulcast location or lounging on their couch or hunched over the computers. Some say that's progress. Most just say it's sad.
The horses enter the clubhouse turn in the first race of Oaklawn Park's 2005 meeting
Longing for the good old days when people actually came to the track, there was always some excitement in the air and most places had an opening and closing day rather than run endless meets? Take a trip back into time, a trip to Oaklawn Park.
There were 22,831 people in the stands Friday as the Hot Springs, Ark. track opened for its 101st season. That's more than Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Tampa Bay Downs, Golden Gate Fields and the Fair Grounds combined. An opening day will bring out a good crowd, but the large attendance was far from a one-day phenomenon. Track management expected a total crowd of more than 62,000 for the opening three days and daily average attendance should top last year's figure of 12,455 per day. Arkansas Derby Day alone could bring out about 65,000.
The phenomenon is not hard to explain: Oaklawn is the only game in town.
The track offers the only legal wagering in the state and there are no major league professional sports teams in Arkansas. Gamblers and spots fans alike have few other alternatives. That's a distinct advantage over a track like Aqueduct, which is surrounded by casinos in Connecticut and in Atlantic City, is located in a state with a lottery and operates in a metropolitan area with nine professional sports teams. Even the area racing fan has plenty of other alternatives. There is a racetrack no more than 20 miles away at the Meadowlands, another track in nearby Yonkers and the city has dozens of OTB parlors. The closest racetracks to Oaklawn Park are Lone Star (a four-hour drive) and Louisiana Downs (a three-hour drive).
With few other places to go to satisfy their gambling needs, people travel to Oaklawn from all over the area. On any given day, you can find cars from Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi and Kansas in the parking lot. Most come for the weekends, enjoying two or three days at the track and the sights and sounds of Hot Springs, a resort town.
"Up until Louisiana Downs opened (in 1974), we were the only racetrack around for hundreds of miles," said Oaklawn announcer and publicist Terry Wallace. "It became a tradition around here that people would come to Oaklawn Park and build their vacations around coming to the track. A lot of that hasn't changed."
But even Oaklawn hasn't been immune to the pressures of competition. Average on-track attendance hovered around 22,000 a day before casinos were built in Tunica, Mississippi, 225 miles away. The casinos proved so popular that even Hot Springs is a stop on the route of busses carrying Arkansans to the Tunica casinos.
Oaklawn fought back. Aware that approval of on-track slot machines was unlikely in such a conservative state, Oaklawn General Manager invented a game called Instant Racing, sort of a merger of slots and horse racing. The idea is to give the gambler what so many want these days, dumbed-down, instant action.
The Instant Racing machines look a lot like a slot machine, but patrons actually gamble on random and unidentifiable races run in the past. Because the races have already been run and are stored in a video library, the customer can bet on as many races as he or she wants and can have them run in rapid-fire succession. Oaklawn has handled more than $1 million in a single day on Instant Racing.
"We're up to 240 machines and it is growing enormously," Wallace said. "Every year, it grows by 50 percent."
Wallace expects annual handle on Instant Racing to soon top the $100 million mark.
Oaklawn has also successfully lured fans with such popular gimmicks as the 50-cent corned beef sandwich, which will be offered during the first three days of the meet. About six tons of corned beef will be consumed during that period.
With casino mania having peaked, on-track attendace was up 4 percent last year and Oaklawn officials expect that it will increase again at this year's 55-day meet that runs through April 16. A lot of that has to do with the momentum created last year when Smarty Jones made three starts at Oaklawn before winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
"People around here feel like we are No. 1 and Smarty Jones has had a lot to do with that," Wallace said. "We felt he was our horse just as much as people in Philadelphia thought he was there horse. The only difference is that Philadelphia is a lot bigger. But he ran here more times than he did at any other racetrack. On Kentucky Derby Day, we had 7,500 people here (for simulcasting) and they won $1.9 million betting on Smarty. We actually ran out of money. We had to pay people by check."
Smarty's trainer John Servis is back with another top prospect in Rockport Harbor and Tim Ritchey has arrived for the season with the good 3-year-old Afleet Alex. That has people optimistic that still another Kentucky Derby winner is residing at Oaklawn.
But people in Arkansas and surrounding states don't need to see a good 3-year-old to come out. They'll come no matter what, and come by the thousands. In at least one place, live racing still matters.
