The Oak Tree Review: Paean and Promise of a Different Way to Run Horse Racing

[Wandering Eyes]

At first glance, Jay Hovdey's latest literary output, “The Oak Tree Story: A History of Racing's Most Generous Benefactor,” might seem an exercise in nostalgia only, recounting as it does the origins, lifespan and ignominious death of an organization that last put on a show nearly fifteen years ago.

The Oak Tree Racing Association came about as an industry-led non-profit to operate a race-meet during the then barren autumnal months when there was no major racing in Southern California, only to grow into a philanthropic powerhouse and gamechanger for the sport with global ripple effects.

But in chronicling the Oak Tree Racing Association's tenure-spanning both the halcyon summer of California racing and the early fissures of later earthquakes-it's hard not to frame the narrative against the present day, when horse racing's future rests so precariously on the short-term profit-driven whims of corporate track owners and wagering platforms and their broader real-estate and business ambitions that so often run counter to the long-term viability of the sport.

In doing so, the reader is left with the impression of what can be achieved when horse racing takes charge of its own destiny, led by a cohort of smart, thoughtful souls who want for the industry more than it promises to give back.

The story begins in July of 1967, when California governor Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill expanding the racing calendar in the state to include a fallow period from Labor Day through the day after Christmas.

Three individuals were largely responsible for planting Oak Tree's roots, all noted owners and breeders who each had excelled in their chosen professional paths: Clement L. Hirsch (of Kal-Kan pet food fame), Louis R. Rowan (a real estate mogul), and Dr. Jack Robbins (a veterinarian with x-ray like diagnostic skills).

Perhaps not coincidentally, both Rowan and Hirsch were veterans of WWII, having served in the U.S. Army and the Marines respectively.

With its core mission statement of operating “a meet run for horsemen by horsemen,” the Oak Tree group's business model was a revolutionary one (for the time), funneling all non-wagering related revenues towards important equine research projects, backstretch worker welfare and other charitable causes.

In Hovdey's words, Oak Tree hoped to provide an “island of stability in a shifting, uncertain California racing landscape.”

Sounds familiar.

Oak Tree endured something of an extended pregnancy, having first to overcome obstacles laid before it from the likes of the state's powerful Standardbred interests, and then from the workers' union group tied to Hollywood Park's fall harness meet that overlapped Oak Tree.

But launch it eventually did at Santa Anita on Tuesday Oct. 7, 1969, attended by 16,733 souls who wagered nearly $1.5 million over a nine-race card that bore a murderer's row of talent in and out of the saddle. Think Rudy Rosales and Bill Hartack, Charlie Whittingham and Johnny Longden.

Indeed, month by month, decade by decade, the stars both horse and human that made the Oak Tree Meet such a resounding success are detailed with the sort of meticulous fashion that would give Rain Man a run for his money.

If the Oak Tree of the 1970s was all about laying foundation stones (thanks to the exploits of Tizna and Ancient Title and co.), the 1980s were all about building the edifice of the meet up and out (through age-defying exploits from the likes of John Henry, and then as a vital proving ground for the newly inaugurated Breeders' Cup).

The Oak Tree founding board of directors gathers in the Santa Anita Directors' Room–(standing) Louis Rowan, Clement Hirsch, B.J. Ridder, William Pascoe, (seated) Harold Ramser, J.T. Jones, and Dr. Jack Robbins | Courtesy Jay Hovdey

If the 1980s belonged in large to Charlie Whittingham, the 1990s saw the emergence to center stage of more contemporary training touchstones. Headley. Frankel. Baffert. Mandella. Drysdale. The first decade of the new millennium rounded out with the sort of thrilling late flourish epitomized by that era's undisputed headline act, Zenyatta.

And then Oak Tree was over.

In 1998, Austrian entrepreneur Frank Stronach purchased Santa Anita Park under his Magna International (MI) Developments banner. Despite his initial qualms, the new owner signed a long-term lease with Oak Tree, allowing the non-profit to continue operating at the track.

MI Developments, however, would be folded under Stronach's Magna Entertainment Corp. (MEC) banner. And in March of 2009, MEC filed for bankruptcy, citing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Santa Anita was up for grabs-or so it appeared.

Hovdey recounts how a group of influential owners maneuvered to purchase the track and operate racing there “as an Oak Tree-style, non-profit entity.” But Stronach would have none of it.

By April of the following year, a Delaware bankruptcy court agreed to a reorganization of MEC that saw Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields remain under Stronach's control. More pointedly for Oak Tree, its lease with Santa Anita-which was to have continued to 2016-was voided.

By 2011, Oak Tree was effectively dead as a racing operator, drowned beneath a swirling confluence of events including California's botched experiment with synthetic surfaces, Hollywood Park's threatened closure and redevelopment, as well as, in Hovdey's words, Stronach's hardened stance “against leasing Santa Anita to an outside group.”

In reading Hovdey's clinical autopsy of Oak Tree's life and death, it's hard not to extrapolate from it a set of lessons built around a different north star, one that which places at its core the sport and its participants' best long-term interests.

To be sure, corporate interests don't hold their fangs to horse racing's throat only. But the sport does appear especially vulnerable right now, its carotid arteries bared for the killer bite.

The success of Oak Tree, however, affords industry stakeholders the reminder of a different way to do business. New York has gotten the memo. Still with much work to be done, Maryland promises to do the same.

“Oak Tree was a brilliant idea,” says Del Mar supremo, Joe Harper, as something of a coda. “It was a bunch of well-heeled, very smart business guys who loved the game. But don't get me wrong. They were very diligent businessmen when it came to operating Oak Tree. They worried about every cent they spent, because everything going to Oak Tree was going to help the game. Most companies are formed to make a profit. This company was formed to do good.”

The post The Oak Tree Review: Paean and Promise of a Different Way to Run Horse Racing appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

View the full article