New Orleans Track Cuts Back on Meeting

The Fair Grounds race track will cut back to four-day weeks next season to have bigger purses for its winners.

“Less doesn’t have to be less,” majority owner Louie Roussel III said Tuesday. “Less days is what the industry needs. We want to have less days and give the public better races. We want to give the horsemen better purses.”

This season, before a freeze cost the track two days and led to 12-race weekend cards, a typical five-day week called for 11 races a day. A 98-day season was scheduled, with some 12-race days.

Next season will have 82 days--from Thanksgiving, Nov. 22, 1990, to April 7, 1991--with 12 races a day, Roussel said.

Roussel said the track can increase purses to an average of $120,000 a day by eliminating Wednesday racing. He called Wednesday and Thursday “bleeding days” when handles don’t pay for purses.

“Why should a man stay here and run for $90,000 a day when he can go to Oaklawn Park and run for $160,000? The whole economy suffers when we lose 100 trainers. We’ve got to hope that by getting the purse structure up to $120,000 a day, we can keep some of these people,” Roussel said.

For the first 85 days of the current meeting, purses averaged $91,728 a day, not including quarter-horse races. On days without stakes races, daily purses averaged $75,039 a day; on days with stakes races, they averaged $115,571.

The new schedule will let the track raise stakes purses, Roussel said. He said most $25,000-added stakes races will be boosted to $30,000-added. The Fair Grounds Oaks will be boosted by $10,000 to $100,000-added. And allowance features will be increased from $15,000 to $17,500 so the winner gets at least $10,000, Roussel said.

He said that track officials considered a five-day, 45-race schedule but that the proposed four-day, 48-race week is more feasible.