Breeders’ Cup Politics as Competitive as Races : Major Tracks Around Country Try to Break California’s Hold on the Event

It has been said that the best way to make an enemy out of a friend is to become partners with him in an important race horse.

When John Gaines, the dog-food heir and Kentucky breeder, began developing ideas in 1981 for what has evolved into the $10-million Breeders’ Cup, his raison d’etre was to pump fresh blood into an anemic game. Gaines’ brainchild has been surprisingly fruitful. More than 106,000 fans have attended the first two Breeders’ Cups at Hollywood Park and Aqueduct, betting $15.6 million on 14 races. NBC, reacting to a sport that has been generally treated like a leper by the major networks in recent years, has carried eight hours of live time the first two years and will devote four more hours to a Breeders’ Cup that may draw 70,000 to Santa Anita Saturday.

Those are the positives. But what John Gaines didn’t foresee was the amount of back-door politicking and no-holds-barred infighting that has resulted among the tracks that seek to be the host of the prestigious event. Many race track operators have long been suspicious of one another; the Breeders’ Cup gives several of them additional reasons to be uneasy about what the competition is doing.

Hollywood Park will become the first track to run the Breeders’ Cup a second time when the seven races go there in 1987. That will give California the series three times out of the first four years, and while the feeling in the racing Establishment is that this pattern could continue, it won’t be without some all-out pitches from the New York Racing Assn. and the tracks that have been bypassed.

D.G. Van Clief, the executive director of the Lexington, Ky.-based Breeders’ Cup, said the group’s track selection committee will meet early next year to begin considering sites for the 1988 races. The committee, the most powerful in an organization that is overrun with committees (how about the ex officio non-voting executive committee?), currently consists of Nelson Bunker Hunt, Brownell Combs, John Mabee and John Nerud. Hunt and Combs have been prominent Kentucky breeders; Mabee breeds horses in California and Kentucky, besides being president of Del Mar, and Nerud is president of Tartan Farms in Ocala, Fla.

“We’re going to take a look at what Saturday’s races draw, what the television ratings are and how the media coverage is,” Van Clief said. “Those are the things that will help determine where we go after 1987. It would be nice if we could wait until after Saturday and 1987 before we move ahead, but because of preparation time required by a host track, we don’t have that luxury. The decision on ’88 will have to be made sometime next year.”

According to Van Clief, Hollywood Park and Santa Anita would take the Breeders’ Cup every chance they get; Aqueduct is interested in being the host again; and tracks such as the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Churchill Downs and Keeneland in Kentucky, and Hialeah and Gulfstream Park in Florida are also going to re-apply.

The Breeders’ Cup actually reneged on Kentucky, bypassing either Churchill Downs or Keeneland after the state was promised the series in 1987. Lagging television ratings--NBC estimated that 5 million fewer people tuned in last year, compared to 1984--resulted in the emphasis on the West Coast in 1986-87, which enables the races to begin at an advantageous time of 2 p.m. in the populous East.

Keeneland, recognizing that Churchill Downs, because of its much larger physical plant and the identification with the Kentucky Derby, was willing to allow the Breeders’ Cup to go to the Louisville track the first time around in 1987. But now that that possibility has been removed, there are indications that Keeneland will make a strong pitch for ’88.

On the surface, this seems ridiculous, because when 25,000 people show up at Keeneland, the fire marshal gets nervous. But Ted Bassett, Keeneland’s president, feels that television ratings--which supposedly might introduce the sport to younger people and help racing reverse its shrinking market--are more important than a live gate for the Breeders’ Cup.

A continual California-New York rotation does not please the many Kentucky directors on the Breeders’ Cup board. They point out that, after all, Kentucky is the undisputed breeding capital of the world, so where else should the Breeders’ Cup eventually be held?

But even John Gaines sees a flaw in that reasoning. He pointed out recently that only 7% of the members of the stallion syndications at his Gainesway Farm are from Kentucky. About one-fourth are foreign breeders and the rest come from states other than Kentucky. Gaines estimates that stallion syndicates at other Kentucky farms consist of about 80% out-of-state investors.

One Breeders’ Cup director who doesn’t favor the races going to Churchill Downs is John Mabee.

“We don’t want to gouge the fans on Breeders’ Cup day, and I have the feeling Churchill would do that, just like at the Derby,” Mabee said. “That’s the only thing they know there and I think it might be worse at the Breeders’ Cup than it is for the Derby.”

The Louisville Courier-Journal, in a recent survey, concluded that Churchill Downs, after doubling prices for the Derby in 1985, has made the race one of the most expensive major sporting events in the country.

The Meadowlands, which made a low-key presentation in a quest for the Breeders’ Cup a couple of years ago, may be more aggressive the next time.

“We didn’t use any audio-visuals the last time,” said Sam Anzalone, general manager of the Meadowlands, which competes with New York’s thoroughbred tracks for four months each year. “We didn’t want to come on like a bull in a china shop and kick up a lot of dust. But we think we deserve the shot and maybe we should come on stronger this time.”

After Hollywood Park received the 1984 Breeders’ Cup, Marje Everett, the track’s chief operating officer, was accused of coming on too strong. Everett admitted that she had promised a personal contribution of $200,000 to the Breeders’ Cup, before Hollywood had been selected.

Some racing executives wondered whether the Breeders’ Cup day was for sale, rather than being awarded to the track that was most qualified. Everett responded by saying that the competing application by Oak Tree-at-Santa Anita also included a $100,000 sweetener. Oak Tree officials responded by saying that their offer differed in that the $100,000 was coming from corporate funds.

A chill still remains between Everett and Herman Smith, Oak Tree’s executive vice president.

John Nerud says Hollywood Park deserved to get the Breeders’ Cup the first year because of Everett’s attitude toward television.

“Sonny Werblin, who knows television as well as anybody, said that we’d be lucky to get 1 1/2 hours on any network,” Nerud said. “Hollywood Park had much more faith than that. Marje was the only race-track executive who recognized what prestige would come from this series of races.”

Television coverage aside, there were racing observers who doubted that John Gaines’ idea would ever reach the race track.

“John, do you smoke pot?” John Galbreath asked Gaines when he first mentioned his plan. Galbreath is one of Kentucky’s most influential observers.

A Sports Illustrated writer had this to say about the proposed Breeders’ Cup: “It’s the ultimate in sports hype. This thing will never come off.”

But it has, and seems here to stay. Already, it has survived two heated races at Hollywood Park, where a winner (Fran’s Valentine) was disqualified and where owners of two other horses screamed like banshees when another winner (Wild Again) wasn’t disqualified.

The Wild Again race was marked by a three-horse bumping incident from the sixteenth pole to the finish line. There is more bumping in the Breeders’ Cup’s future--when several of the nation’s more prominent race tracks go behind closed doors to see if they can bring the event to their town.

Herat: Back at the crime scene. Grahame L. Jones’ story, Page 4.