Things Not Looking up, that';s for sure
Chicago Tracks Stay Dark
By Bill Finley
Hopes that another meeting between horsemen and the
owners of Balmoral and Maywood would result in a deal that
would allow the 2014 Chicago racing season to get going
went up in flames yesterday as the two sides appeared to
move further apart.
Dave McCaffrey, who is among the negotiators for the
Illinois Harness Horsemen's Association, left the meeting so
discouraged that he said it could be a long time before
racing resumes in the Windy City area.
"This could drag on for months," he said.
HRU was not able to reach anyone on the management
side.
The crux of the issue remains purses. They were small to
begin with at the two Illinois tracks and grew even smaller
when the year's first condition sheets for Balmoral and
Maywood were released. According to McCaffrey, the tracks
are sitting on $5.5 million in their purse accounts and he
wants his group, and not management, to decide how it
should be doled out. If the horsemen took control of the
purse accounts, presumably they would find a way to
maintain purse levels, at least through the first few months of
the year.
HRU was not able to reach anyone on the management
side.
The crux of the issue remains purses. They were small to
begin with at the two Illinois tracks and grew even smaller
when the year's first condition sheets for Balmoral and
Maywood were released. According to McCaffrey, the tracks
are sitting on $5.5 million in their purse accounts and he
wants his group, and not management, to decide how it
should be doled out. If the horsemen took control of the
purse accounts, presumably they would find a way to
maintain purse levels, at least through the first few months of
the year.
"This could drag on for months," he said.
HRU was not able to reach anyone on the management
side.
The crux of the issue remains purses. They were small to
begin with at the two Illinois tracks and grew even smaller
when the year's first condition sheets for Balmoral and
Maywood were released. According to McCaffrey, the tracks
are sitting on $5.5 million in their purse accounts and he
wants his group, and not management, to decide how it
should be doled out. If the horsemen took control of the
purse accounts, presumably they would find a way to
maintain purse levels, at least through the first few months of
the year.
The Illinois Racing Board will not allow Balmoral and
Maywood to open until a contract with the horsemen has
been signed.
"This is a serious fight and a big story for horse racing
because this is a philosophical fight over who controls
horsemen's money," he said. "This is absolutely baloney
that we can't control our own money. We've got $5.5
million sitting out there and we can't race. We are
essentially being locked out. Everybody wants to race."
McCaffery said that after some progress had been made
toward a settlement management backtracked and
decided to play hard ball yesterday.
"There were two proposals out there on Wednesday and
we tried to split things and move toward their position, by
more than half, and they continually backtracked and took
proposals off the table,” he said. “Without question I am
more pessimistic than I was the day before and the reason
is the goal posts were moved. We moved toward their
position and they moved away from us and away from
what was their existing position."
McCaffrey has maintained all along the horsemen can't
survive on purses that will be any smaller than those
offered in 2013.
"They want product," he said. "It's like we're produci
2/8/14 PAGE 2 of 7
Nuncio has joined the potent
Takter Stable (Lisa Photo)
cans of soup for $1 a can and we're selling them for 50
cents. Yet, they want us to keep producing soup. We can't
keep putting on the show when we're losing 50 cents every
time we make a can of soup."
Last night's card at Maywood was the latest to fall victim of
the contract dispute.
In a related development, with so much still up in the air in
Illinois for 2014 the tracks announced yesterday that the
standard Feb. 15 deadline for stakes payments has been
extended to March 15.
Balmoral and Maywood issued a press release which read:
"While we hope and expect our live racing product to resume
very soon, we felt it would be in the best interests of
horsemen in both Illinois and throughout the country to
extend the deadline for nomination payments until March 1st
in order to allow everything to be finalized."
