Horse Shortage Causing Havoc at Delaware Park

[Wandering Eyes]

The horse shortage has hovered over racing for year, a black cloud that, inevitably, had to become a crippling problem for some racetracks. Running cards filled with four or five-horse races is a recipe for disaster; a betting product the public will not buy. While the problem has gotten incrementally worse every year, it has reached a tipping point this year at Delaware Park.
It’s not surprising that it is a track in the Mid-Atlantic region that is having a crisis. At this time of year, Delaware Park, Parx, Monmouth and Laurel are all running. Though offering a cheaper brand of racing, Penn National and Charles Town also factor into the equation and Colonial Downs in Virginia is set to re-open for a 15-day meet in August. The track has been closed since 2013. There is too much racing in the Mid-Atlantic and not nearly enough horses available to fill cards at so many tracks.
Neither is it surprising that Delaware is the track getting hit the hardest by the horse shortage as it has the smallest purses among the four major tracks in the area, Parx, Laurel, Monmouth and Delaware. They are averaging $156,000 a day in purses.
At Delaware, three of the first 13 scheduled cards had to be canceled due to a lack of entries. There are no official records kept on how often tracks have had to cancel due to a lack of entries, but it’s likely Delaware has set some sort of low mark. When it has raced, Delaware has averaged a little over 6.4 starters per race and most cards include just seven races for Thoroughbreds and one for Arabians. Four and five-horse fields are not uncommon.
Both sides, management and horsemen, are doing their best to come up with solutions, but this is all about a supply and demand. There is no magic wand. Worse yet, rather than come together, the two sides seem more interested in pointing fingers at one another.
Track President Bill Fasy said the meet got off on the wrong foot when horsemen insisted Delaware Park open up on the day of the GI Kentucky Derby. In prior years, the track did not open until the first week in June. All three cancellations have come in May.
“I would absolutely say that our horsemen’s group insisting on racing in May created a big problem,” Fasy said. “We told them the horses wouldn’t be available to us that early. But that was a big push for them in order to agree to a contract.”
With sports betting proving additional revenue, the horsemen also successfully lobbied to extend the meet from 81 to 85 total days.
“We also agreed to, even though we didn’t believe the races would fill, to take on four additional days,” Fasy said. “You have to be practical. With the field sizes we have had last two years and with the purse money we have we cannot be competitive with other tracks in the area. The horsemen are not looking at the supply and demand, the economics.”
Fasy claimed that Delaware Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association President Scott Peck wants to run 100 cards a year. The TDN asked to speak with Peck, but the horsemen’s group asked that Executive Director Bessie Gruwell answer questions on its behalf.
Delaware was the first state in the area to have slot machines and for years it thrived. In 1999 and 2000, the meet consisted of 149 days. But once surrounding states, particularly Pennsylvania, added alternative gaming to its racetracks, the revenue from Delaware’s casino plummeted. Most of the purse money comes from casino profits. The trick became how to run a meet of reasonable length while maintaining competitive purses. When Fasy was asked what he felt would be an optimal number of racing dates, he sais that was an area he did not want to touch.
“I would hate to answer that and I will tell you the reason why,” he said. “Years ago, I was almost involved with a lynch mob in my paddock that wanted to hang me when I told them we needed to go from 135 to 120 days. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don”t.”
He did say that the solution lies in figuring out what Delaware needs to pay out in daily purses to be competitive and then take the amount of money it has for purses. Do the math and that should give you a meet length that is viable.
It’s been a difficult stretch for the horsemen, as well, and Gruwell didn’t hide the fact that many are angry. She said Delaware should have opened the turf course earlier (the first grass race was run on Memorial Day), that there are more horses on the grounds this year than last year and that the racing office has not been working hard enough to fill cards.
“The first time they canceled the card they stopped taking entries at 3 p.m. and said we can’t make the card,” she said. “The second time they canceled it was at 2 p.m. The third time it was 12:49 p.m. Some of these guys at other tracks are staying there until six or seven at night to put together a card. They called ours off at 12:49 p.m. in afternoon.”
In a perfect world, Delaware could turn back the clock to the 1950s when it ran 32-day meets. The Maryland tracks would close as they had formed a circuit with Delaware and there was no legal racing in Pennsylvania at the time. Some seventy years later, with a 32-day meet and with all the slots money available to the track, the purses would be among the best in the country. But the horsemen argue that is not a realistic solution. Since Delaware does not race year-round, it must rely on outfits to ship in from other tracks like Tampa Bay Downs and the feeling is no one would stable at Delaware if the meet were so short.
With the turf course now fully operational and with 2-year-old racing underway, Delaware has resources that should increase field size. However, after running three days a week since opening day, the track went to a four-day-a-week schedule starting May 30. Ironically, that was a day it had to cancel.
“I’m worried that four days a week just won’t happen,” Gruwell said.
And she’s well aware that further cancellations will be a hardship on her membership.
“Any day that you can’t race is a day you can’t make money,” she said. “Any day you can’t lead your horse over there to race, it’s a day you have no opportunity to make money. It doesn’t matter if the purse is $100, $10,000 or $100,000, the horseman have to have a chance to earn.”
Fasy said he believes the solution is for racing to take a page out of its past and start up again with circuits that include one or more states. He also knows that isn’t going to happen.
In the meantime, one of racing’s most picturesque tracks and one with a storied past, is in trouble. There doesn’t seem to be much that anyone can do, other than accept the status quo, keep on racing with short fields and hope the cancellations don’t become a regularity.
Delaware has carded seven Thoroughbred races for Wednesday with 52 horses entered for an average field size of 7.4. That’s not good, but neither is it terrible. Maybe the worst is over.

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