Racing Sets Goal of Unity : Business: Panel will be formed to reach agreement on the best way to revive an ailing thoroughbred industry.

Leaders in California’s racing industry will meet today at Santa Anita to form a panel to try to reach a problem-solving consensus that frequently eludes the sport in times of crisis.

“The trouble with racing is that each part of the industry doesn’t respect the other,” trainer Dick Mandella said. “If each group makes demands, they shouldn’t expect all of them to be accepted.”

Mandella finds himself working both sides of the street in the strained relationship between his fellow trainers and Hollywood Park. One of Mandella’s major clients is owner-breeder R.D. Hubbard, board chairman at the track. Hollywood Park will introduce a club for card playing by the end of the year. Mandella also is a member of the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. (CHBPA), whose leadership opposes a mingling of horse racing with other forms of gambling.

“If Mr. Hubbard wasn’t good for racing, I wouldn’t work for him,” Mandella said Tuesday.

The trainer was one of the final speakers in a two-day conference in Pasadena sponsored by the CHBPA. Besides gambling, speakers addressed other racing problems, including tracks’ treatment of their fans, the loss of horse owners and the states’ reluctance to reduce their taxes on the betting dollar.

At least two in attendance, I. Nelson Rose, a gambling pundit from Whittier College, and George Hardie, an owner of harness horses who runs a card club in the City of Commerce, said that racing was boring. Alluding to this, Chris McCarron, a Hall of Fame jockey, suggested that track operators should study the way the sport is run in Japan, where there is less time between races.

The panel, suggested by Cliff Goodrich, Santa Anita’s president, and Chris Clark, a horse owner, will face the same obstacles that were underscored in Pasadena: Nearly a dozen vested-interest groups were unable to agree on where racing is going or what business racing is in.

There was even disagreement about where racing has been. Owner-trainer Brian Sweeney, a CHBPA director and moderator of the conference, took exception to a view that eight years ago, racing should have joined forces with the new California state lottery, offering real races to determine prize winners. Instead, racing spent thousands of dollars opposing the lottery, then introduced exotic bets that resulted in large, lottery-size payoffs.

Sweeney said that racing was rebuffed in its effort to join the lottery.

But Jim Smith, vice president of the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn., had a different view.

“Racing had the opportunity to be the lottery,” Smith said. “But we couldn’t agree what to do among ourselves. We shot ourselves in the foot and lost our chance forever.”

That exchange triggered several observations that racing was trapped on its own treadmill, spending too much time on the defensive.

“We should anticipate the future and bust our fannies to shape it to our benefit,” said Biff Lowry, an official with the California Authority of Racing Fairs. “Racing has never had any strategic planning.”

Alan Balch, a former Santa Anita vice president who now supervises marketing at the track, said that one reason for poor planning is a lack of research.

And the conference showed how difficult it is to obtain even basic racing statistics. Eugene Christiansen, a gaming analyst, said that attendance has increased at Louisiana Downs since the track introduced video poker machines last July. But Jeffrey Kallenberg, former chairman of the Louisiana State Racing Commission, showed figures that contradicted Christiansen.

Then officials from Hollywood Park said that Kallenberg’s presentation was skewed. And still later, Bryan Krantz, president of the Fair Grounds, another Louisiana track, said that video poker “was more of a benefit than a negative, because it offers, through cross-over business, one way of getting females and young people to come to the track.”

The major issue for racing is whether it should position itself alongside other forms of gambling. One by one, conference speakers took sides, with some, such as Ralph Scurfield, California Horse Racing Board chairman, straddling the line.

“We need to form a we in the industry,” Scurfield said. “Unless we become a we, racing will not benefit, no matter which way it goes. Without the we, racing’s going to get chewed up.”

Hubbard disagreed with a characterization that he is a “proponent” of other forms of gambling.

“All I’m saying is that if (non-racing gambling) is here, we better grab a piece of it,” he said.

Hubbard said that his timing in buying a greyhound track in Portland, Ore., couldn’t have been worse. Video lottery games had been legalized there three weeks before.

“I spent a lot of money fighting those games,” Hubbard said. “We’ve taken the fight to the state Supreme Court, but I know we’re going to lose it.”

The CHBPA recently filed a suit challenging the legality of the California lottery’s keno game.

Hubbard’s philosophy is shared by Tom Meeker, the president of Churchill Downs, who surprised many California horsemen with a dinner speech Monday night.

“If we stick with just live racing, few (tracks) will survive,” Meeker said. “Simulcasting (importing televised races for betting) is a second alternative. Gaming is a third.

“I think that most major racing centers will adopt the third alternative. They will make gaming an ancillary business to go with racing. It’s not a pleasant sight. The proliferation of VLT’s (video lottery terminals) is an insidious competitive threat. But as a public company, you have to do some things.”

Said Balch: “I’m shocked to find the president of Churchill Downs saying this. This has set me back. I thought the way to improve the game was through our imaginations. I can’t believe (he’s) saying we should accept these other alternatives just because they’re there. They’re killing us, and yet we’re hearing this from someone from the mecca of racing.”

Said Joe Harper, the president of Del Mar: “Racing is our only product. I can’t preach to other tracks, but racing is our product, and we don’t need another product. Racing needs to be innovative, to wrap itself in a better wrapper.”

Del Mar is nearing the completion of an $80-million remodeling program.

“I’d rather go down with the positives than struggle with the dragons and the demons,” Harper said.