Pimlico, Churchill Downs both face mounting challenges

Updated: May 14, 2009, 4:12 PM ET

Preakness is a tradition in turmoil

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By Pat Forde
ESPN.com
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BALTIMORE -- If you show up at Pimlico Race Course this Saturday, you'll probably think Maryland racing is a wonderfully thriving enterprise. The track will be jammed with about 100,000 fans, on hand for nine stakes races that are capped off by the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes.

Same thing if you showed up at Churchill Downs in Louisville on the first Saturday in May. The crowd two weeks ago numbered more than 153,000 to see Mine That Bird go from last to first in a shocking Kentucky Derby victory.

But if you visited either ancient, venerable track on an average weekday, you'd see mammoth structures that are veritable ghost towns. You'd see small fields and small crowds betting small amounts. You'd see two of the bedrock thoroughbred racing states in America in trouble.

At Churchill, they announced this week that the ongoing spring meet will be reduced by seven days as the track pares back to a four-day race week. Six Wednesday cards and one Thursday card have been wiped out because there aren't enough horses to fill the races, an astounding erosion of available horseflesh at America's most famous racetrack, in a state that considers itself the epicenter of all things equine.

"People I talk to are No. 1 saddened," said Churchill Downs Inc. senior vice president Kevin Flanery. "It's never a good thing when Churchill Downs announces it has to cut race days. But No. 2, a lot of people are shaking their heads and saying, 'Well, this has been predicted for a long time.'

Pouya Dianat/US PresswirePimlico is now open just 20 days a year.

"This is Kentucky, and Kentucky is the horse capital of the world. But the industry in Kentucky is at a critical point in its history."

At Pimlico, the track known as "Old Hilltop," the situation is worse. The racing calendar is now just 20 days in the spring. The owner of Pimlico and many other tracks nationwide, Magna Entertainment Corp., filed for bankruptcy in February and only two weeks ago removed itself from bankruptcy. Fearing that the state's signature track might lose the signature race it has staged for 134 years, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill that would allow the state to exercise eminent domain and seize ownership of both the track and the Preakness.

Despite that move, there are some who wonder whether the ancient traditions of Pimlico and the Preakness are doomed.

"This is the second jewel of the Triple Crown," said trainer Bob Baffert, who has won the Preakness four times and calls it his favorite Triple Crown race. "If it were to be moved anywhere else, we'd kill the classics. It just wouldn't be the same. I just can't see Baltimore losing this track. … It would be horrible for racing."

There has been talk of moving the Preakness to Maryland's other track, Laurel Park, which has the vast majority of the state's racing dates (131 in 2009). But that track could not handle crowds anywhere near the size of those the Preakness draws. Its record attendance of just over 40,000 was set more than half a century ago, and its parking lot has fewer than 3,500 spaces.

Outside the Lines

For more on Pimlico's dilemma, including an interview with ESPN.com columnist Pat Forde, watch "Outside the Lines" on Friday at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN.

And the physical plants at both Pimlico and Laurel Park are aging, creaking edifices. As one racing official, speaking on terms of anonymity, put it Thursday morning at the Preakness alibi breakfast at Pimlico: "This place could use a good fire, then they could start over again."

"I think this thing will stay here, but I don't know what happens," said trainer D. Wayne Lukas, a five-time Preakness winner. "Is there a way to move it to Laurel? They can't keep two tracks open for one race a year, can they?"

The reason two tradition-steeped tracks like Pimlico and Churchill Downs are struggling to maintain their standards? It's not just the flagging economy, and it's not just the general inability of horse racing to connect with a younger audience.

Mostly, they're being robbed by one-armed bandits.

Slot machines, video lottery terminals and other forms of gambling -- "alternative gaming" is the popular term -- are not legal in either Maryland or Kentucky. Sitting Kentucky governor Steve Beshear ran partially on a platform of bringing alternative gaming to the state, a stance wildly popular with the racing industry, but any hint of that legislation has been tenaciously road-blocked in the state senate.

But slots are legal in neighboring states like West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania. With the additional lure of slots and other gambling, racetracks in those states are bleeding the bedrock dry.

Former off-brand locales such as Mountaineer Park in West Virginia, Delaware Park and Philadelphia Park are now pumping up their purses and attracting many of the claiming-level horses from Kentucky and Maryland that make up the backbone of daily racing. Even Sunland Park in remote New Mexico has snuck a piece of the pie after pumping itself up as a "racino." It's the home base of Derby winner Mine That Bird and his trainer, Chip Woolley.

"[Slots] are a game-changer," Flanery said. "The situation that states like Kentucky and Maryland are in at this point, the racing has to compete with other tracks that are able to supplement their purses with alternative gaming revenue."

The numbers don't lie. On what will be the final Wednesday race card of the spring at Churchill Downs, 61 horses went to post in nine races. On the same day at Delaware Park, 76 horses competed in 10 races.

On Tuesday, Mountaineer Park had 78 horses run in nine races. On the Thursday of its biggest week of the year, Pimlico had 72 horses entered in nine races. Total purse money at Pimlico on Thursday: $158,000. Total purse money at Mountaineer on Tuesday: $164,000. Biggest single purse: a $75,000 race at Mountaineer.

Those are appreciable differences, as bettors look for fatter odds in fuller fields and horsemen look for bigger purses. And those states are also using some of the gambling revenue to enhance their in-state breeding programs, making them threats to the long-standing traditional breeding states.

So two of the ancient power bases of racing -- integral pieces of the American sporting tapestry -- are under siege in a changing landscape.

It's impossible to envision the Kentucky Derby ever losing its place in the sport's hierarchy, but the Preakness' place is less secure. If something doesn't change soon, and drastically, the festive scene at Pimlico on Saturday could disappear from Baltimore forever.

Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com