There’s Room for Laurel and Pimlico

If Laurel and Pimlico were children instead of racetracks, their relationship would be diagnosed as a classic case of sibling rivalry.

The elder child always had been well-liked, with a good sense of self-esteem. But then his younger brother grew to be so handsome, so popular and so successful that he became the object of universal attention and acclaim. Now the elder boy is suffering from a serious inferiority complex, and frets that nobody likes him any more.

So when Laurel opened last week, amidst much enthusiasm and evidence that this would be another record-breaking season, Pimlico’s hometown newspaper, the Baltimore Evening Sun, asked in a banner headline, “With Fewer Dates, Is Pimlico Nearing Finish Line?”

The Maryland Racing Commission had just given approval to a request by the tracks’ owners to cut the number of 1990 racing dates at Pimlico from 155 to 137 and run them at Laurel instead. The Evening Sun speculated the management would eventually like to reduce Pimlico’s dates to zero. It said “the reduction in dates confirms the second-class status that Pimlico has been accorded since Laurel’s owners, headed by the late Frank De Francis, purchased the track from the Cohen family in late 1986.”

There is no question that Laurel has become Maryland’s No. 1 track -- but not because anybody is subverting Pimlico. Laurel is a more pleasant facility than Pimlico’s big old barn of a grandstand, but management has begun the long task of refurbishing Pimlico, and its new Sports Palace is a knockout.

Yet even if a replica of the Taj Mahal were erected on Hayward Avenue, Pimlico could not compete with Laurel’s advantages in geography and demographics. “Look at a map and look at the population bases of the tracks,” said Joe De Francis, the president of both. “Laurel is more centrally located.”

Laurel is easily accessible for vast numbers of people in the Washington and Baltimore areas. But for Washingtonians, getting to Pimlico is a headache that may require negotiating two beltways as well as congested streets around the track.

This is one reason that Laurel has been generating impressive numbers and also stunned its own management with the business it’s attracted for simulcasts from Pimlico.

Given these facts of life, what should management do with the two tracks? A purely economic analysis might conclude that it is wasteful to spend money for the upkeep and refurbishment of two tracks when one would do. But this conclusion would ignore an important human factor: horseplayer burnout.

Racetrack customers are energized by a change of scene and worn down by interminable racing seasons. It is no accident that some of the most successful tracks in the country are ones with short, well-defined racing seasons: Saratoga, Del Mar, Oaklawn Park.

“By the time February or March roll around,” De Francis observed, “everybody at Laurel is saying that they’re looking forward to moving to Pimlico. It’s important to have two tracks. If Laurel were to try to run 365 days a year, I don’t think it would perform nearly as well.”

Under the circumstances, the tracks’ management seems to be doing the optimal thing: running the majority of the dates at Laurel but still conducting a substantial season at Pimlico.

If management can be criticized for its operation of the two tracks, it would not be for slighting Pimlico, but for slighting whichever track is receiving simulcasts from the other.

Patrons at Laurel in September could justifiably complain that the simulcasting operation seems to be treated like an afterthought, rather than a crucial part of the Maryland tracks’ business. The quality of the television transmission was poor. The flow of information was spotty at best. (If a bettor wanted to know the results of the Double Triple, or potential payoffs in the Pick Three, or changing track conditions on rainy days, he was often in the dark.) Mutuel windows frequently were understaffed. Food service in dining rooms was limited to sandwiches and salads, based on the assumption that simulcast patrons don’t eat as much as people watching live races.

The concept of operating a live track and a simulcast track at the same time is a relatively new one in thoroughbred racing, and the owners of Laurel and Pimlico surely will learn from experience. They seem to have tailored the overall Maryland racing schedule in an intelligent and effective fashion. Now they need to make their simulcast customers stop feeling like unwanted children.