From the Good News Department: The Washington Racing Commission met Monday to discuss Emerald’s request to drop the four Friday race cards in August. Why the request? Here is Emerald President Phil Ziegler in the TDN:
“I was told at the beginning of the season that filling three days a week of racing was going to be difficult to maybe impossible. And I said, ‘Well, we have to try, give it our best shot to do this.’ And we tried. Everybody knows that we’ve struggled to fill races and cards this season. There’s been a couple of occasions where, I believe, if this was almost any other track, we would have already lost three or four days.
“Handle’s down 15% from last year. … We have 692 horses versus 915 [and] starters are down 21%. … Our average field size is 6.19 compared to 7.32. That is a shocking thing. But this is the most shocking number: Last year, this time, we had 15 races that went with [as few as] five horses. This year, 56. And a lot of those aren’t four-horse fields. They’re fours and a couple of threes.”
With Portland Meadows’ shuttering in 2019, Golden Gate’s in 2024 (with the NorCal fair circuit following), and Hastings’ this past December, Emerald is it on the Pacific Coast until you get to Southern California. Hence, the “horse population” problem. Ultimately, the Commission approved the cutback. Here’s hoping ’tis the beginning of the end.
Meantime, in Illinois: The initial purchase bid for bankrupt Hawthorne has come in at $90M – but, and here’s the good news, that bidder intends to redevelop the property for other-than-racing purposes. A bankruptcy judge has extended the deadline for competing bids to Jul 10, with the hope within the industry that a “going concern” bid – i.e., one that intends to keep racing – will come in. If not, this would mean the end of Thoroughbred racing at Hawthorne (the harness operation there has already closed), leaving Fairmount as Illinois’ lone racetrack. The progress is set to continue…
Well, VJ, I can guess too. My first guess is you don’t know much about horses. If you did you would know keeping them confined to a tiny stall 23 hours out of every 24 is far from treating them well, in fact it is cruel.
Another guess is you don’t know how many horses die each year at the tracks; how many are mamed; how many are trucked to die in the slaughter houses of Canada and Mexico every year; how many on the trucks are discarded brood mares in foal or not. I could go on and on but my guess is facts don’t matter to you.
One more thing, and it is not a guess, your disgust is misplaced
Wanda , Grant`s pass was running races in 87F temp.s yesterday! I know I don`t work well over 80F especially if there`s no cooling wind. Not usually much cool wind there.
VJ, it’s no surprise that you would have to guess about what other people who have been there and done that know about horses and racing because you have no clue what many of us have seen firsthand in the way that horses are treated in racing. You simply show your ignorance and the fact that you couldn’t care less about how much horses actually suffer for your amusement.
Have you ever thought of putting a camera in the stalls and film the horses while they are confined to stalls for 23 hours a day? You might not have the resources to do that, but it would be quite revealing at just how much horses suffer being locked up in stalls just like prisoners. That type and degree of suffering is not counting the pounding the horses take under saddle and rider carrying a whip and most likely an illegal electric shocking device.
Are you so short-sighted that you can’t comprehend the pain of ulcers and Degenerative Joint Disease and a vast number of other horrible injuries that racehorses have to endure? Show your friends the videos of horses suffering from being confined to stalls 23 hours a day and then maybe they will tell you what kind of person you are. That is, if you still think there is nothing wrong with exploiting horses for racing.
https://horseracingwrongs.org/americas-dead-racehorses-state-by-state-track-by-track/
I’m guessing none of you have ever been to a barn or backstretch to see how these horses are treated… People like you disgust me. You’re the real problem.
There are bad actors in EVERY business. Horse racing is no different. The bad actors aren’t at nearly the level you portray them to be.
I’ll admit, I have a handful of friends who think the same way you do. Whenever I offer for them to come to the backside for a day and see how the horses are treated, they always decline. I truly believe they are afraid to open up their minds to the possibility that they could be wrong. They’re afraid they would see happy, healthy horses enjoying their “jobs” and that they were cared for better than most humans would take care of themselves.
You celebrate tracks closing down, which in turn denies thoroughbred and standardbred horses being able to do what they were meant to do and putting the people that care for them out of business. You’re truly a disgusting group.
Wanda – Good point. Wildfire season on top of that with heat stress, smoke exposure, and compromised air quality are not abstract concerns. The decision to proceed as normal is willful disregard for horses and people.
This is what happens when an industry can no longer sustain itself. If Hawthorne is ultimately redeveloped, it would be another sign that the land has become more valuable than the racing business. The dominoes are set to fall, and once they start, they’re hard to stop.
I still remember someone on this site who insinuated that now Donald Trump was elected he would eliminate horseracing as waste😒she claimed he was going to eliminate waste….and shutdown horseracing. I know who said it,but …oh well.
Grants Pass Downs in Oregon will manage to continue terrorizing horses for the rest of the summer meet and then again in September and October of 2026.
They will have the Firecracker Futurity worth $95,000 on the 4th of July for Quarter Horses. That’s a big deal for the racing people and I can only imagine the sheer terror for the young horses. It’s also wildfire season.