Curtain Comes Down on Historic Fonner Park Meet

As the meet was winding down Wednesday on the final day of racing in 2020 at Fonner Park, trainer Kelli Martinez was getting ready to ship her stable to Prairie Meadows. The Fonner meet was a good one for Martinez, who was second in the standings entering the day with 35 winners, and she was in no hurry to leave.

It wasn't just the winners, it was the memories that she would be leaving behind.

“It was a stressful meet but it was a very different and very successful year for Fonner Park,” she said.

It was all that and more.

Back when the meet started Feb. 21, a lot of people in racing barely knew Fonner existed. “They thought we came from some little bush track,” Martinez said. Ninety-five days later, Fonner was a track that was churning out $3.5 million a day in handle and had captured the imagination of horseplayers hungry to have something to bet on and anyone else who likes a story of the underdog making good.

Entering mid-March, Fonner was having a good meet, at least by Fonner standards. A bullring track in Grand Island, Nebraska, the handle was averaging about $260,000 a day. Because most of it was coming from on-track bets, of which Fonner keeps a large percentage, the track could afford to pay out its modest purses, about $50,000 a card.

But the meet was in jeopardy as the coronavirus swept across the country and Fonner management told horsemen they were going to have to close. That never happened as a compromise was reached and an experiment was undertaken in which Fonner would no longer race on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Instead, the track would race Monday thorough Wednesday, spectator-free, in hopes that, with so little competition from other tracks, handle would go up.

It soared. On Apr. 7, with a mandatory payout of the track's Pick Five wager, Fonner handled $7.2 million. Since the shift to weekdays, the track has averaged about $3.5 million in wagering per day.

“After the first couple of weeks after we switched the days around I stopped being amazed. The handle just kept coming and coming,” said Fonner's energetic CEO Chris Kotulak.

That Fonner faced so little competition is the primary reason handle went up, but horseplayers still had to accept the track. With its small purses, cheap horses and unknown jockeys and trainers, that wasn't a given. But something kept the gambler coming back every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as they discovered this little track in Central Nebraska.

“People, if they even knew Fonner Park existed, probably thought it was some dusty little track in the middle of nowhere,” Kotulak said. “Just by the way we run our operations and how efficient we are, I know for a fact we are not. We are a real racetrack, not just a carnival or fair meet that pops up for a handful of days.”

Wednesday's card also meant the end of the Nebraska racing season. Meets had been scheduled at tracks in Columbus and Lincoln, Nebraska that would have meant racing through July 5. But, because of the pandemic, neither track will race this year.

Martinez's barn is one of the best in Nebraska and she can compete in other states. Not everyone is as fortunate. Kotulak said many of Nebraska's smaller trainers would be hard pressed to win races without the option of staying on the Nebraska circuit. For Fonner's horsemen and jockeys, heading to the next stop is not always practical.

David Anderson, a 14-time leading trainer, was ready to call it a year. He normally goes to Prairie Meadows but said he wanted to do something different this year and enjoy some time away from the races.

“I'll be sending some of my horses to other trainers at Canterbury and Prairie Meadows,” he said. “With the rest, I'm just going to take them to my farm and not run again until Fonner opens next year. With the pandemic going on, I thought that was the right move. My dad is 86 and my mom is 84 and I have not seen them over the last 2 1/2 months. They've been self quarantined. I also have a 2 1/2-year-old grandson. I have just decided I will stay at the farm this summer and enjoy life a little bit.”

Martinez's husband Armando was the leading rider at Fonner and will soon be on his way to Prairie Meadows. Jake Olesiak, second in the standings, won't be coming with him. Olesiak used to go from track to track across the Midwest. He decided to cut back after his second daughter was born and now rides just in Nebraska. He will show up Thursday at his regular job, as a production supervisor at an ethanol company in Adams, Nebraska.

“I can't travel too far anymore,” he said. “I will break a few babies this summer. I'll do that and my full-time job. Most likely, I am done for the year.”

Other jockeys will scatter, some to Fair Meadows in Oklahoma, others to the fair tracks in North Dakota or Arapahoe Park in Colorado. Many of the trainers will find their way to those tracks and Canterbury and Prairie Meadows. They will soon be headed out of town, but none will forget Fonner Park 2020.

“When they announced in middle of March they were going to discontinue the races my thought was what the hell are we going to do now?” Anderson said. “Then they came up with the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday plan and it was phenomenal. That allowed us to earn a paycheck. With no fans, it was a strange meet and nothing like anything I ever experienced. But look what happened here. It was a stroke of genius.”