Rockingham Regains Role by Default

There was a time when racing at Rockingham Park was the centerpiece of the New England thoroughbred season. Horses would run in Rhode Island during the winter, at Boston’s Suffolk Downs in the spring and at the Rock during the summertime. Located on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, Rockingham was pretty, immaculate and well-run, and it was so popular that it drew average daily crowds of more than 15,000 during some years of the 1960s.

Rockingham has now reclaimed its old role as New England’s pre-eminent track, only this time it has earned the distinction by default. There is no more New England thoroughbred circuit. Horses disappeared from Rhode Island (and were replaced by greyhounds) years ago. Suffolk Downs was shut down by owner Buddy LeRoux at the end of 1989. Rockingham has managed to survive by offering cheap racing at a modest physical plant.

The decline of New England racing has been pitiful and slightly mystifying, because the region has the commodity most essential to any racetrack’s success: Enthusiastic horseplayers. Greater Boston has a big blue-collar population that loves to gamble and manages to support two greyhound tracks, which operate concurrently, often with day-night doubleheaders. They love horses too.

“These are great fans,” said Rockingham publicist Bill Nader. “They put up with a lot -- maybe like nowhere in the country. One day here we had a blizzard and a sleet storm that was so bad that it took me an hour to scrape the ice off my windshield. And we still handled $130,000 on the card!”

Besides this base of fans, New England always has had an exceptionally strong contingent of horsemen and horses. It had all the makings of a top racing circuit. “Racing here could be on the level of Maryland or New Jersey,” said Rockingham General Manager Ed Callahan.

What makes New England different from Maryland or New Jersey is that it is divided into political jurisdictions, none of which has ever displayed much concern for the well-being of the thoroughbred industry. Searching for increased revenues, each state authorized expansion of its racing dates and created head-on conflicts among the tracks, which succeeded in putting Rhode Island permanently out of the thoroughbred business. Rockingham and Suffolk coexisted until a fire destroyed most of the Rockingham grandstand in 1980.

Suffolk then started running year-round, and when Rockingham was reopened in 1984, Suffolk’s management wouldn’t cede any part of the racing calendar. Operating in head-on conflict, neither track could prosper; both were struggling to survive. Because of its metropolitan location, Suffolk figured to be the stronger operation, but owner Buddy LeRoux thought his property was worth far more as real estate than it was as a racetrack -- so he shut it down, leaving New England horseplayers only with Rockingham and a steady diet of cheap claiming races.

Racing fans in Massachusetts clung to the hope that a white knight would arrive and save horse racing in the state. The late Frank De Francis had been interested in buying or leasing Suffolk, and so had Ladbrokes, the huge British bookmaking firm, but both were put off by LeRoux’s intransigence as well as the thicket of political problems in the state. Then came a new white knight: Ben Simone, a prominent road builder, who proposed to erect a track in the town of Wrentham. Even an ordinarily cynical journalist said: “We’re used to ripping everybody involved in racing here, but nobody knocks this guy. He’s a gentleman and a sportsman. He wants to do it right.”

Simone owned the land and had the necessary capital; all he needed was approval of a town referendum. On Monday night, the citizens of Wrentham voted down his plan for a racetrack. Massachusetts is back to square one.

Since Massachusetts has been without a horse track, business at the Rock has been booming -- it is up 35 percent over a year ago -- and track management has earmarked this windfall for improvement of the physical facilities and increases in purses. But Rockingham is still afraid to make an all-out commitment to becoming a top-class facility, for fear of what might happen in the neighboring state. “I think it’s definite that Massachusetts will be back,” Callahan said. “I don’t see how New England is going to go without another track.”

If that happens, he said, “Ideally what I’d like to see is all the states try to get together, have tracks with seasonal operations and try to put together a regional off-track betting system. It’s on the horizon, and Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are all looking for new income.” Of course, such interstate cooperation may be a pipe dream, because it was the lack of interstate cooperation on racing dates that has created so many problems.

For the foreseeable future, anyway, New England racing will be synonymous with Rockingham Park. The track’s management is able and well-intentioned but it faces a formidable task if it wants to upgrade its facilities or the quality of its competition to anything approaching a major-league level. On a recent Sunday, there wasn’t a single horse on the entire card who was worth more than $7,500. It will be a long time before New England’s long-suffering but devoted horseplayers get the quality of racing they deserve.