Thin Hope
Former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci recently resigned as ambassador to Canada after nearly four years of service to join Magna as the vice president of corporate development (Thoroughbred Times). The Boston Herald reports that this development has some Suffolk Downs owners and trainers hoping that Cellucci will rescue the endangered track by convincing Magna to buy it:
“I am looking at Mr. Cellucci as being someone who could be the right person, at the right place, at the right time to bring a fresh breath of air to thoroughbred racing,” said Anthony Spadea Jr., who owns a stable of horses that race at Suffolk….
Bill Lagorio, a Suffolk horseman, wants Cellucci to sell his new boss at Magna, Austrian-immigrant-turned-business-tycoon Frank Stronach, on adding Suffolk to his empire.
“It’s a great track for Stronach,” Lagorio said, citing the money the gambling chief could make “resurrecting this track and making it a showplace.”
I don’t remember Cellucci as much of a friend to horse racing during his brief governership. That he’s being put forward as a possible savior can be taken as a sign of how desperate Suffolk’s situation has become.
MassCap Set for June 18
Yesterday brought welcome news, a reminder that spring is coming and Massachusetts’ long horseless season is coming to an end: Suffolk Downs announced its 2005 stakes schedule. The $500,000 Massachusetts Handicap (Gr. II) will be run on June 18, along with the $200,000 James B. Moseley Breeders’ Cup. Last year’s MassCap was won by Offlee Wild, who’s running this weekend for the first time since that race in the Campbell at Laurel Park. No stakes are scheduled for the meet’s final two months, which has been the situation for the past couple of years, although in both 2004 and 2003, some money was found late in the meet to run a couple of stakes races for state-breds. Perhaps the same will happen this year. Suffolk’s barns open on March 16, and live racing begins on April 30. I can hardly wait.
Another Proposal
The CEO of Harrah’s Entertainment urged business leaders and politicians to bring casinos to Massachusetts in a speech made on Thursday. Gary Loveman said that “Harrah’s would like to build casinos in the state, possibly on the Suffolk Downs racetrack campus, which he said has enough space for a hotel and entertainment facility.” Casinos in Massachusetts aren’t too likely — the state is “desperately dependent” on the $800 million the state lottery brings in and legislators don’t want any competition for the revenue, but this article is about yet another proposal for developing the Suffolk Downs land. The Celtics are talking about the site, and real estate development groups, and now this guy, all of which says to me that the feeling of area business leaders is that Suffolk’s days are numbered. With all this talk flying about, how much longer will Boston have a racetrack? Woe to the New England racing fan! (Boston Globe)
Developing Suffolk
There have been ominous rumblings about the future of Suffolk Downs in the local press recently — an article hinting at the possibility of more commercial development on land owned by the track appeared in the Boston Globe two weeks ago and a couple of stories in the Herald have mentioned the Celtics are considering Suffolk as a site for their new arena — but nothing so alarming as what the Globe reported this morning:
“Steven Roth, the tough, entrepreneurial chief executive of giant Vornado Realty Trust, has his sights set on Boston’s Suffolk Downs. And it is a better bet than any you could place at the struggling track that the opportunity he sees is not in a bunch of old men shouting at a TV screen and betting two bucks on a race at Aqueduct.
“Suffolk Downs is a dying business, and has been for years. But make no mistake: There is value there, and the smart money is lining up.
“Vornado, a New York real estate investment trust with a market value of $9 billion, has launched a tender offer seeking to buy the shares of Suffolk Downs’s constantly warring stockholders.”
Live racing is scheduled to begin in April, and as a New England racing fan, I hope it’s not the last year. If Suffolk Downs is sold for development, it effectively means the end of the sport not just in Boston, but in the region.
One Race
Call Me Mr. Vain was the winningest horse in North America in 2003 with 11 wins; he spent most of 2004 in his stall, recovering from a tendon injury. His owner/trainer called me this afternoon to let me know that Mr. Vain was running in the third at Charles Town tonight and that he was going to “run big.” I was skeptical — it’s a rare trainer who doesn’t think his horse will win every time it goes out — but a look at the third race, which was one of those messy cheap claiming affairs in which a lot of horses don’t make much sense, showed that Mr. Vain was easily one of the contenders, and so my racing companion and I ventured out to East Boston, arriving in time for the second race at Charles Town.
Struggling Suffolk
May “be forced” to develop more land. This is just the sort of article that stirs up a New England racing fan’s anxiety, even if it’s no more than a reminder of Suffolk Downs’ precarious situation and reports little new information. (Boston Globe)
Suffolk Handle, Attendance Up
“Suffolk Downs posted increases in daily average handles and attendance in 2004, the first season the track operated as the lone Thoroughbred track in New England,” reports the Daily Racing Form. The average daily handle was more than $1.1 million from all sources, an increase of 5.3% over 2003, while average daily attendance rose 5.5% to 3421.
‘Til Next Spring
That’s all for Ascot Doll and Suffolk Downs until 2005
The season ended at Suffolk Downs today, and my racing companion and I snuck away from work to catch a little action. We arrived barely in time for the third race; the horses were being loaded in the gate as we entered the grandstand. No matter, the race we really wanted to see was the fourth, in which our mutual favorite, Ascot Doll, was running. This afternoon was the first time Ascot Doll had raced since late June owing to an ankle injury, and he didn’t run as well as his trainer would have liked (he was, alas, last by several lengths), but he returned to the barn sound and peppy and all was forgiven. The Doll is going to a farm for the winter and will be back at Suffolk next spring, just as I’m sure I will.
At the Downs Today
Jockey Winston Thompson extended his winning streak to 13 days with three wins this afternoon and clinched the meet’s jockey title, beating out eight-time title champ Joe Hampshire. With one day of racing left at Suffolk Downs, Thompson leads Hampshire 154-143.
Wacky Wednesday at Suffolk
“It wasn’t a full moon, but something celestial seemingly made it a wacky Wednesday at Suffolk. The battery for one of the starting gates died just before the first race. In the third race, a horse flipped in the starting gate, causing a five-minute delay. The stewards disqualified the winner of the fourth race for what they saw as two distinct fouls in the same race. They then declared Nieges Que Te Amo a non-starter in the fifth race, after he reared up in the gate and unseated jockey Edwin Molinari seconds before the starter opened the gates. The horse ran loose during the race and bothered some of the other horses, but was covered up so well in the pack, the track announcer and fans couldn’t tell what had happened until the far turn.” (Daily Racing Form)
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The November issue of Boston Magazine has an article on Suffolk Downs’ backstretch workers. The photos by Joshua Dalsimer are striking; the text by John Wolfson is offensive. “Most of the hundreds of men and women here never had a single glory day. They probably never will,” he writes of those that work on the backstretch, focusing his story on a couple of broken-down, hard-luck souls and one scrappy immigrant. So bleak. So colorful! What a nice little trip for Mr. Wolfson into a world of hard knocks and hard work. Too bad that the story he writes isn’t the story of most of those who make their living with the horses.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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