For the Cagey Bettor : Amid Caliente’s Menagerie, Racing Resumes After More Than a Year

Visitors to Jorge Hank Rhon’s office at Caliente Race Track are relieved to see that his Rottweiler dog and pet cheetah are no longer there. The Rottweiler would sit for hours, staring holes through people. And the cheetah always looked hungry.

The shock factor of the office menagerie has been reduced considerably. Parrots in cages are like bookends for Hank’s desk. Behind the desk, in a tank, is a collection of eels. At the opposite end of the room, in another tank, there is a mixed marriage of a boa constrictor and a python.

A recent interview with Hank had barely started when a reporter felt something licking a free hand that was dangling from his chair.

“What’s this?” Hank was asked.

“That’s a dog,” said Hank, who in the Latino tradition has added his mother’s maiden name, Rhon, to the family name.

Later it was learned that the affectionate little dog is a very expensive Chinese breed. The hairless pooch is pink, with big ears, and if he had a curly tail, he could pass for a pig.

Caliente also has two caged lions, a pair of Siberian wolves, hundreds of exotic birds, 13 camels, three elephants and a hippopotamus, but Hank’s attention these days is on horses, who have resumed running at the 61-year-old track for the first time in more than a year.

Shortly after Thanksgiving in 1989, 1,200 union workers went on strike over demands that included being paid in American money. Hank, who has been running Caliente since 1985, didn’t make that concession, but the employees later came back after receiving salary increases of 26% and agreeing to the elimination of 200 jobs. The contract expires in May, with Hank optimistic that there won’t be another strike.

The horseplayers of Baja California, and the Americans who cross the border near San Diego, have survived without Caliente before. In 1971, there was a major fire at the track and racing didn’t resume until three years later, after a $20-million rebuilding program.

In the 1980s, Caliente was competitively squeezed by year-round racing in Southern California and a new off-track betting circuit that permits Del Mar, 40 miles from Tijuana, to be open all the time. Paradoxically, the population growth of Tijuana, which is estimated to be reaching the 2-million mark, has probably hurt Caliente. Traffic jams at the international border have discouraged race-going tourists, the group most likely to increase per-capita betting at the track.

Hank, who will turn 35 next week, is a realist. Under his management, the track reportedly went $15 million in debt before the strike, and Hank said that Caliente spent $9 million “out of pocket” during the strike.

“There were expenses, even though there was no racing,” Hank said. “For example, we continued to pay the tote company, because we were under contract to lease their machines.

“Live racing will never be profitable for us. It costs us $80,000, counting purses, to open every day we race, and even though the takeout is 25% (5% to 8% higher than in California, depending on the type of bet), the handle doesn’t generate enough to let us make a profit.

“Dog racing (which Caliente runs at night) is slightly profitable, because the expenses aren’t as great. The only reason we have live racing is that it’s required (by the government) in order to have the sport and race books.”

Hank runs seven sport and race books in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada. In miniature, they are Nevada-style parlors that offer the gamut of betting, from horse and greyhound racing to football, basketball, baseball and boxing.

One of the betting books is located in the fancy Fiesta Americana Hotel, less than a mile from Caliente. There are wall-to-wall television monitors and bar and food service. Last weekend, a bettor had nonstop action from 9 in the morning until 11 at night. The day began with races from several Eastern tracks, including Aqueduct and Gulfstream Park, continued with Santa Anita and Bay Meadows in the afternoon and concluded with harness racing from the Meadowlands and greyhounds from Hollywood, Fla., and Caliente.

On Caliente’s reopening day Jan. 19, the book, which has a capacity of perhaps 200, was not crowded. Neither was Caliente, which despite ideal weather and a lot of fanfare, drew 5,300 fans, half of what Hank expected, and they bet only $191,000.

A Caliente spokeswoman said that overall tourism for Tijuana was down 60% for the weekend, primarily because of concern about the war in the Persian Gulf.

Traditionally, recessions seem to help race-track business.

“I think we will do all right,” Hank said. “You don’t like to talk this way about a recession, but when one comes, $10 only spends like $8. That’s when people come to the race track, trying to make up that missing $2.”

Because of the strike, the newly created sports books were closed for six months.

“I like to say that they were born dead,” Hank said. “We didn’t push them, because of the knowledge that we might have a strike and they would be closed down.”

Caliente’s operative slogan is “The Reopening of the Legend.” The track is still surrounded by the residential hills where Phar Lap, the legendary Australian horse, supposedly galloped through the streets, training for his historic victory in 1932, only weeks before his mysterious death.

After World War II, John Allesio, who owned the track, introduced the 5-10 bet, which challenged horseplayers to pick the winners of races five through 10. Now known as the Pick Six, it is an important marketing tool at many American tracks.

Laz Barrera, who attended the reopening, first brought horses to Caliente in 1952, after having trained in Mexico City since 1945. Barrera is the only trainer who has been elected to the racing halls of fame in Cuba, Mexico and the United States.

“A track like Caliente is very necessary for California racing,” Barrera said. “There has to be a place where at least 600 or 700 California-breds can train the year around, because there’s not room for all the horses at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. I’d like to see Caliente run a big stake race just for California-breds one of these days.”

Snow Chief, the American 3-year-old champion in 1986, had his early training here before he started running at the California tracks. The sports-book bar in the Fiesta Americana is named after him.

California owners can have horses trained cheaply at Caliente, where they are close enough to be shipped in for American races. And for years, the racing surface here has been considered one of the safest around.

“I don’t know what it was about the surface at Caliente,” said John Maluvius, a former racing secretary and steward at the track. “When you walked across it, it reminded you of an unplowed field. But there’s a cushion underneath that the horses just love. It must make them feel good to run over it, because they just bounce along, and the times are pretty good for cheap horses.”

Even in the rough, there were no Phar Laps running here on reopening day. In one race there were two 10-year-old sons of Dust Commander, the 1970 Kentucky Derby winner. They had run more than 100 times between them. One hadn’t raced since he was claimed for $40,000 at Santa Anita Feb. 21, 1987, and neither finished in the money.

With a stable capacity of 1,200, Hank says there are about 700 horses currently on the grounds. Caliente runs horses only on weekends.

The plant has been gussied up, the food in the dining rooms is good, and on reopening day, the mariachi bands were in tune and the sombreroed outriders gave the post parades a special flair. Hank brought in Michael Wrona, Hollywood Park’s announcer, to call the races, and he is using Trevor Denman, the Santa Anita and Del Mar caller, for radio commercials.

Trainers, jockeys and horses were scattered in many directions when the strike came. Adalberto Lopez, who won four races reopening day, went to California for a year, where he said he won about 50 races at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Fairplex Park and Los Alamitos.

“My family is here, so that’s why I came back,” said Lopez, 25. “But I will be going back to California. I want to ride at the fairs there this year.”

Lopez went back out to the track, got on a 4-year-old filly named Cherished Deb and added to his victory total. Cherished Deb had also won at Caliente six days before, when the track conducted a shake-down program of races to re-acclimate the employees. Cherished Deb is working on becoming a legend, even if it’s only in the $3,200 claiming ranks.