HORSE RACING : Thoroughbred Industry Dying in 2 States

John Martin does not waver. His voice is steady, staid. He is not trying to tell a joke--he is trying to make a point.

There might be a tinge of humor in this tale, but few in Colorado are laughing. Martin, the president of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn., certainly is not.

The thoroughbred industry in Colorado is in serious trouble, closer to extinction than anything else.

“One horseman gave me the best example. He comes to me, tells me, ‘Some guy just tried to sell me a horse.’

“I’m thinking that’s great, what’s wrong with that? And he said to me, ‘Hell, three or four guys have tried to GIVE me their horses.’

“A Colorado-bred isn’t worth five cents,” Martin said. “A breeder selling a horse can’t even make his registration fees back.”

That is the state of thoroughbred breeding and racing in Colorado. It is all but dead, existing in name only.

It has been that way since 1984, since Arapaho Park shut its doors. And it can be directly related to Centennial Downs -- the home of thoroughbred racing in Colorado for 34 years -- which was sold to developers in 1983.

The sale of Centennial Downs had a devastating effect. The industry, which was in good health in the early 1980s, has never recovered.

And ever since Longacres Race Course was sold in September, the question has been out there, dangling: Is Washington’s thoroughbred industry headed for the same fate?

The similarities between the thoroughbred breeding and racing industries in Colorado and Washington are striking, eerily so.

“The parallels go right on down the line,” Martin said. “At Centennial they sold because the land was more valuable than what the racing industry could bring in, same as Longacres.

“It was sold to out-of-town investors. At Longacres, Boeing bought it. But it’s still a corporate thing.”

The similarities do not end there. The sale of Centennial Downs sent a shiver through the horse-racing community in Colorado. The horsemen were sent scrambling, trying to come up with a long-term solution in a short period of time.

They had to search for a site to build a race track, for investors to foot the bill. They had to build a race track from scratch, starting with nothing but the gumption to make it work.

In the fall of 1983, the horsemen in Colorado were in the very same position their counterparts in Washington have faced since the Alhadeff family sold Longacres’ fertile 215-acre plant in Renton to the Boeing Co.

The leaders of the horse racing and breeding industry in Washington have secured one more season of racing at Longacres, but are still searching for viable alternatives for the next year.

At this point, anyway, the horsemen can only hope they fare better than Arapaho Park did.

When it was built in 1984, Arapaho was the Colorado horse racing community’s answer to the sale of Centennial Downs. The track was built on 273 acres of a 700-acre development in Arapaho County at a cost of about $36 million.

It was plagued with problems from the start, everything from poor financing and a large debt to poor access and fan support. Arapaho survived for just one season. After that, it was closed. Bankrupt.

With no racing, the breeding industry shriveled. The entire industry and all of the related businesses went into a downward spiral.

The numbers are staggering. In 1983, Centennial Downs’ last year of operation, there were 161 broodmares registered in Colorado. Today, there are just 19. In 1982, there were 311 foals dropped in Colorado. Last year, there were 76.

“A lot of people asked, ‘Why should we even be here if there isn’t any racing. We have no place to race,”’ said Ingrid Knotts, of the Colorado Thoroughbred Breeders Association.

“All of our big farms are gone now,” she said. “They all moved to Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. We don’t have many, anymore. They all just sold out or moved.”

“I wish I could paint a better picture, but I can’t,” Martin said. “There’s been a chain reaction throughout the state since then.”

The breeding industry has suffered, restaurants and hotels and motels have closed down. “It’s hard to say how many people have been affected,” Martin said. “I’d probably under-estimate it and I wouldn’t know where to start.

“It’s affected so many people, grooms, veterinarians, feed stores, all of the agri-businesses ...

“They all start looking for greener grass. And if they can’t find it in state, they go out of state.”

It is not a pretty picture. But the mistakes made there provide valuable lessons for horsemen in Washington who are now trying to find a site to build a race track.

The process of building a race track from scratch is not as easy as connecting the dots, from A to B to C. There are other letters to be considered, like E for environmental impact study, T for taxes, L for licensing, and S for shortcut, which Washington horsemen would be wise to avoid.

There is also P -- as in panic button. Push it, and problems -- of which there are many -- multiply. Arapaho Park is proof of that.

“Arapaho Park opened in May of 1984 and it was only about half completed, which was a bad move,” said Eddie Hasley of the Colorado Racing Commission.

“We had a bad winter, were rushed for time, and they didn’t get the facility completed. But they needed to open because of some stock and bond issues and they wanted to open to try and get some of their investment back.

“It was just a mistake on everyone’s part. There were a lot of obstacles to overcome and they didn’t get it done.”

The track suffered from inadequate funding. The facility was located in the country and some of the roads leading to the facility were not yet paved when the track opened for business, Hasley said.

The track came in far short of projections in attendance and mutuel handle, averaging 1,986 patrons and $172,446 in handle for its 77-day thoroughbred meet.

In its last season, Centennial Downs had a average daily handle nearly double that.

“It was disastrous,” Martin said.

The track folded up neatly as a pup tent and the owners filed for bankruptcy at the end of the season.

Arapaho Park now sits Southeast of Denver, half completed and completely empty. Several people have talked about reopening the facility, but nothing has happened.

The failure of Arapaho Park crushed the momentum the horse men needed to get the industry back on its feet. The emotion has faded, and the future looks more grim as each year passes.

That is the danger Washington horsemen face. One bad venture could further cripple the industry. As it is, their task is infinitely more difficult than the one Colorado horsemen faced.

In today’s market, analysts say a new facility could carry a price tag much closer to $100 million than $36 million.

The last five race tracks built in the United States cost an average of $70.2 million, with a high of $97 million at Remington Park in Oklahoma City and $40 million for Prairie Meadows in Iowa.

To its advantage, Washington’s thoroughbred racing and breeding is significantly larger than that in Colorado and may have more resources at its disposal. But even then, it can ill afford even a single bad step -- the impact of one is plainly visible.

“We had a pretty good bunch of breeders and owners,” Hasley said. “The horse racing industry in Colorado was big, but it has been a steady decline since Centennial closed down.

“I don’t think it will every get back to where it was,” he said.

“I can certainly feel for the horsemen and the community there in Washington. When Centennial closed, everything faded and it has not come back to this day.”