From the Illinois Racing Board yesterday:
“Today the Illinois Racing Board made a very difficult decision to suspend the operating license of Suburban Downs [which takes place at Hawthorne; see our recent post]. On Jan. 15, IRB requested bank statements that reflect the operating fund, and any fund related to racing operations at Suburban Downs. Unfortunately, their financial difficulties, including failure to provide financial documents showing their ability to operate assigned 2026 race dates, have led us to suspend their license.”
If this holds, harness racing in Illinois will be completely dead. And that, folks, is what’s called moral progress.
Doping and whipping horses was not a problem for these animal exploiters and animal abusers looking to make a “living” by using and abusing horses. The problem, the reason given for shutting the place down, was a lack of money changing hands; the money flow stopped.
Of course, it’s all about the money. Just like the California Horse Racing Board, the Illinois Racing Board was fine with the daily routine mistreatment of horses as gambling chips. But, wait until the money stops.
The lack of the Almighty Dollar to prop up the whipping and doping of horses to force them to perform is what shuts it down.
This is a long overdue intervention. If an operation can’t even produce basic financial documents, it has no business being anywhere near horses. Full stop. “Tradition” is not a license to operate broke, opaque, and desperate, and it’s certainly not a license to gamble with living beings. If this means the end of harness racing in Illinois, that is moral progress. This isn’t “sad.” It’s overdue. If an industry collapses the moment it’s asked to prove it can pay its bills, that industry was already dead. It was just still using horses to prop itself up. An industry that can’t survive without pretending and bailouts will always make the horses pay the price.
Hopefully the 5 old guys actually planning to attend the harness races have a backup plan.