Maryland Horse Racing Should Survive Defection of Its Leading Breeder

The Maryland Million was designed to showcase and celebrate the state’s breeding industry, but nothing that happens at Laurel today will compensate for the blow that the industry suffered this summer.

Windfields Farm, Maryland’s pre-eminent breeder, shut down its operation in Chesapeake City and moved four leading stallions out of the state. Never again will Maryland be the home for horses of this quality; never again will Arab sheiks be spending millions of dollars for the offspring of Maryland stallions.

Yet even though the industry’s prestige may have been dented, the Windfields defection didn’t do serious harm the basic good health of the state’s thoroughbred business.

People in Maryland can still count many more pluses than minuses. The state can look with pride on the sheer number of good horses it produces. Its breeding industry has been run more intelligently and innovatively than any in America. And all the evidence suggests that it is going to get stronger.

The presence of Windfields in Maryland had always been something of an anomaly -- as if Tiffany’s had its main store in Queens instead of on Fifth Avenue. The Canadian-based operation owned Northern Dancer, and when he started to show signs of greatness as a stallion it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his potential being bred to mares north of the border.

So Windfields opened its Maryland farm, and after Northern Dancer established himself as the greatest stallion in the world, it didn’t matter where he called home.

If he had been standing in Alaska, breeders would have shipped their best mares to him. While he was generating so much income (with a stud fee that went as high as $1 million), Windfields could easily afford the expense of dual operations.

But when the great stallion was retired, Windfields found itself back in the real world; it had to compete with other commercial breeders in an increasily tough industry. So its principal stallions, The Minstrel and Assert, are going to Kentucky, along with two others. Lesser stallions who were based there have been shifted to other Maryland farms.

“From a prestige standpoint, this is going to be a significant loss,” said Richard Wilcke, executive vice president of the Maryland Horse Breeders’ Association. “We’re not going to have horses like Ajdal to claim as Maryland-bred champions.”

Ajdal, like El Gran Senor, Shareef Dancer and many others, were Windfields-sired horses who went on to glory in Europe.

Big deal! Aside from the prestige, Maryland hasn’t lost much of anything. The presence of Northern Dancer and The Minstrel didn’t yield any tangible benefits to Maryland. Breeders here could not afford to pay their six-figure stud fees. Nor did the presence of Windfields encourage any other nationally important breeding farms to move to Maryland.

What Maryland still has -- with or without Windfields -- is an efficient breeding industry geared to produce horses for the Laurel-Pimlico circuit, and one whose record compares favorably with any other regional (i.e., non-Kentucky) breeding industry.

Maryland breeders can’t support stallions with astronomical stud fees; the top price a stallion in this region can reasonably command is $25,000 or so. By Kentucky standards, the state’s leading stallions would belong in the bargain basement, but are extraordinarily productive. Rollicking (fee: $10,000) keeps cranking out large numbers of winners year after year. So do Lord Gaylord and John Alden.

If all the states with ambitious programs for their state-bred horses held their own version of Sunday’s extravaganza at Laurel, the overall quality of the Maryland Million would be clearly superior to that of a New York Million and at least as good as a California Million.

And the roster of Maryland-bred chamnpions in recent years can compare favorably with any state. Even without the Windfields horses, Maryland produced champions like Broad Brush, Jameela, Pearl Necklace, Heavenly Cause, Heartlight No. One, Guilty Conscience, Star De Naskra and Dave’s Friend in recent years.

Part of the reason for the success of the Maryland breeding industry is its age; breeders build up bands of broodmares over a long period of time. Breeding programs can’t spring up overnight, as New York has demonstrated. But the other reason for Maryland’s success is the way the industry has been fostered by political and economic forces.

The Maryland Fund, created by the state legislature in 1962, was the first program for state-breds in the country; it channeled purse money to races for Maryland-breds exclusively. It gave such a boost to the industry that virtually every other state has subsequently imititated the program.

But Maryland stayed ahead of the pack by changing the nature of its program and eliminating daily races for state-breds. Instead, the Maryland Fund money went into stakes and into awards for owners and breeders whose horses win in open company. “The idea was to avoid subsidizing cheap horses,” Wilcke said. “We didn’t want people to breed cheap horses in order to duck open competition.

In this respect, Maryland differs markedly from New York and California, whose breeding programs often produce races which are a conspicuous embarrassment. Belmont Park offers $24,000 purses for New York-bred maidens who couldn’t win in $10,000 claiming company if they had to fend for themselves in the real world.

The economic incentives of the Maryland Fund have yielded the intended results, and now another economic stimulus seems likely to push the industry further ahead.

Since Frank DeFrancis and his partners bought the Maryland thoroughbred tracks, and since the state legislature granted special tax relief to the industry, and since inter-track wagering has spurred business, the purses in Maryland have been skyrocketing.

In the fall of 1985 a maiden special weight race at Laurel carried an $11,000 purse; this fall they are worth $16,000 -- and they will be going higher. Some fans have justifiably grumbled that the quality of competition hasn’t improved commensurately with the purse money, but improving the breed takes time.

“You just can’t turn on the spigot and get quality,” said DeFrancis. “The ‘Maryland miracle’ started taking place in 1985, and a breeder who recognized it in 1986 is not going to have 2-year-olds on the track until 1989. But now that people see what is happening to the purses in Maryland, you can see them buying better mares, breeding to better stallions, going into the market and buying better yearlings. It’s exciting to see it happening.”

Indeed, people involved in Maryland racing have no choice but to upgrade, or they won’t be able to compete effectively for the hefty purses now being offered at the state’s tracks. A race run at Laurel last Saturday provided an economic lesson in microcosm.

The allowance race was designed to attract the better distances runners on the grounds, and it would ordinary have been populated by the familiar Maryland regulars like Castelets, Brilliant Stepper and Sparrowvan.

But the race’s $30,000 purse was so attractive that Wayne Lukas shipped a stakes-quality horse, Fast Forward, here from New Jersey, and he blew away the locals.

The horses bred in Maryland are going to keep improving because they have to. And the state’s thoroughbred industry is going to keep getting stronger -- even without the glittery presence of Windfields Farm.