Citing ‘Massive Uptick’ in Horses as Other Meets Close, Mountaineer Adds Two Dates to End of Season

[Wandering Eyes]

Mountaineer Park on Thursday received unanimous permission from the West Virginia Racing Commission (WVRC) to shift one end-of-meet date on its schedule and add two others, moving closing day of the season from Dec. 3 to Dec. 9.

“You'll recall, with the passage of recent legislation, monies were provided back to the purse fund,” Joe Moore, the executive director for the WVRC, said during the commission's Oct. 23 monthly meeting. “And with the additional funding, Charles Town had previously requested three additional race dates, [which] the commission approved.”

Mountaineer's plan to switch the Wednesday, Dec. 3, card to Sunday, Dec. 7, and then tack on Monday and Tuesday programs for Dec. 8 and 9 “puts their request in line with Charles Town with the increased purse funding,” Moore explained.

Prior to the 3-0 vote by commissioners Paul Espinosa, Chip Urling and Tony Figaretti, Espinosa, the WVRC's chairman, asked stakeholders to explain the reasoning behind adding dates as opposed to increasing purses with that money.

“We're not talking a lot of days here, so I'm inclined to support this request,” Espinosa said. “But I see that Mountaineer is struggling like a lot of tracks are right now.”

Espinosa noted that a $4,000 NW2L claiming sprint on Monday, Oct. 20, went off as a match race after four scratches reduced the field to just two starters.

During its most recent four days of racing this week (Sunday through Wednesday), Mountaineer's eight-race cards featured 40, 47, 45 and 46 starters, respectively.

“Any thought to doing a purse increase as opposed to adding additional days to maybe try to attract a few more horses?” Espinosa asked.

Michael Bish, the director of racing at Mountaineer, explained the rationale this way:

“We have a bunch of neighboring tracks that are closing. Presque Isle in Erie, Pennsylvania. Belterra Park down by Cincinnati. I'm seeing a massive uptick in stalls being requested for the last month. We're bringing in about 75 to 80 horses this weekend. We're getting a massive amount of Canadian horses from Fort Erie closing up.

“So our projection for the month of November is looking very strong,” Bish said. “When you look at our last couple of overnights, it's kind of proved that. We're getting big 10-horse fields, 12-horse fields. So in our opinion here, things are going to get a lot better here in this last month.”

The four upcoming programs for Oct. 26-29 have drawn 58, 64, 61 and 71 entries, respectively.

And starting in November, Mountaineer will drop four Wednesdays of racing, as had been planned back at the start of its April-December season, cutting the schedule to just three dates per week.

Jami Poole, the president of the Mountaineer Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, said his organization supports the moves by track management.

“We used to run a lot of days. Over 50 days we've docked [annually] since I've been here,” Poole said. “Our goal as horsemen is to work with management and go to the three days a week most of the time so we can have the big field sizes. And on turf season [we can have] four days a week because [being able to race on] turf will overcome [adding a fourth date to the weekly schedule].

“But our [future] goal here is to run more days to get back to where we were,” Poole said. “We did raise all the bottom purses [recently]. We didn't raise the top purses.”

Racing as deep into December as possible is important, Poole said, “because 90% of these horsemen here, when we close here, have nowhere to go. [They] don't go to Mahoning because they don't get stalls or whatever it is. And our goal is to take care of our horsemen here to get this meet as long as we can get it to go.”

Espinosa said he appreciated the insights from both track management and horsemen.

“You know, everybody's fighting for horses,” Espinosa said. “And again, if we do have a situation where we do have ability to maybe step those purses up a little bit, maybe attract a few more horses, I would think that that's going to help fill those races. But I accept what Mr. Bish outlined and what [Poole] shared, and certainly I commend you on working together and trying to put together the best program that you can.”

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