By T. D. Thornton
Thursday's Illinois Racing Board (IRB) meeting, at which 2025 race dates were awarded, yielded almost the exact same headline and summation of how the very same commission meeting unfolded last year: Illinois racing is still struggling to recover from the twin blows of the 2021 closure of Arlington International Racecourse and the inability of the state's two surviving Thoroughbred venues–Hawthorne Race Course and Fairmount Park (AKA FanDuel Sportsbook & Horse Racing)–to follow through with building their proposed racinos that were legalized back in 2019.
Yet while last year's IRB annual dates meeting was conducted with a noticeable tone of statewide optimism for the near future, this year's marathon 5 1/2-hour meeting Sept. 19 painted a hopeful outlook primarily only at Fairmount.
That's because the Collinsville track's just-approved new ownership group, Accel Entertainment, asked for and received IRB permission to switch some November race dates into October this autumn so Fairmount (280 miles southwest of Hawthorne and just over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri) can begin construction on a temporary racino that it hopes to have operational before GI Kentucky Derby Day in 2025.
By contrast, the ownership at Hawthorne Race Course, which has faced numerous delays and setbacks to the construction of its own racino, frustrated already-stressed Chicago horsemen by leading off its presentation at Thursday's meeting by having an attorney inform the IRB and everyone in attendance that no one from Hawthorne would publicly share any details of that track's racino development because of purported confidentiality issues related to the project.
Tim Carey, Hawthorne's president and general manager, stuck to broad generalities when outlining the potential future of the racino, which he said has already absorbed “tens of millions” in investment money, yet sits uncompleted right near the racetrack, in some spots blocking traditional grandstand views of the races.
“What I will say is that we remain steadfast in our efforts to completely redevelop Hawthorne and to revitalize Illinois horse racing. I believe the information that we've privately shared with the board is unquestionable evidence of that commitment and our continued progress in the effort,” Carey said.
Both David McCaffrey, the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (ITHA)'s executive director, and ITHA president Chris Block, decried Hawthorne's decision to keep the horse racing community in the dark about the racino.
(It's worth noting that none of the eight IRB members present for the meeting questioned, challenged or spoke up about Hawthorne management's desire to stay publicly silent on such an important issue).
Both ITHA leaders went on record as saying that Hawthorne's racing management team is great to work with, but that its racino leadership continues to exasperate horsemen.
“The cooperation level that we have on the racing side is second to none, and those guys are to be commended,” McCaffrey said. “Whoever the hell's running the casino show, it's an outrage. They try to blindfold all of us, and not give us details on how to proceed with our businesses…
“The racino side is abysmal,” McCaffrey continued. “To be blindfolded like this is inexcusable…. The racino side is killing us.”
Block said Hawthorne's lack of direction on the future of the racino, which is supposed to eventually provide the main economic engine for purses at the Chicago-area track, is preventing the sport's stakeholders in Illinois from making plans about their livelihoods.
“I need to let this board know that this racino [was] needed a long time ago,” Block said. “So every day that goes by, you can't appreciate the pressure that Dave and I are under, and the questions we get from horsemen, breeders, jockeys. I mean this is just endless on when this is going to happen.”
As far as the awarding of dates is concerned, Fairmount was granted its requested 55 programs for 2025, a cut of seven race dates from what had been awarded for 2024.
Hawthorne applied for 80 race dates, technically an increase of two over what had been awarded for 2024. But Hawthorne already received permission earlier this season to abandon a series of Saturday cards from mid-July onward, so the actual total of 2024 dates will be closer to around 64 programs when the current season ends Oct. 13.
And that figure of 80 dates for 2025 comes with “an asterisk,” McCaffrey pointed out, referring to the likelihood that, just like this season, Hawthorne next year will not be able to sustain the three-days-a-week racing schedule that it proposes for portions of the 2025 Thoroughbred calendar.
Fairmount will retain its two-day race weeks in 2025, with the season going from Apr. 22-Oct. 28, slicing a little bit of time off of the start and end of the meet compared to this year. Tuesday afternoons and Saturday nights will remain the race days.
Hawthorne, which has tried to make a number of different post times and days of the week work for the past few years, will try adding Monday twilight racing to the mix in 2025.
Hawthorne was granted dates from Mar. 20-July 3 (two days per week on Thursdays and Sundays, with Saturdays replacing Thursdays on the weeks of Triple Crown race simulcasts). Adding in a third date per week (Mondays) will start Aug. 4 and run through Nov. 3, with the racing days being Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays.
Block did state that Hawthorne's willingness to extend the meet into early November will be helpful to horsemen.
Hawthorne, in Stickney on the gritty southwest outskirts of Chicago, for decades had a decidedly blue-collar reputation on the Illinois circuit. But for the past three years it has been thrust into only-game-in-Chicago status after the devastating exodus of the more opulent and suburban Arlington, which was sold and has been razed, but has yet to be redeveloped.
Although it was not explicitly stated at Thursday's IRB meeting, it appears as if Accel might be intending to go back to calling the first horse track in its gaming portfolio by its nearly century-old former name, Fairmount Park.
Fairmount had been rebranded as FanDuel Sportsbook & Horse Racing in 2020 when FanDuel took over as the track's owner. Accel bought the track in July, and the IRB approved the ownership change at Thursday's meeting.
No one who spoke at the Sept. 19 meeting, including executives from Accel, referred to the racetrack as anything other than “Fairmount.” The only time the name “FanDuel” came up was when Accel executives confirmed that a partnership with the sportsbook would continue.
Fairmount received IRB permission to change its scheduled Nov. 5, 9 and 12 dates this autumn to three Thursdays in October (17, 24 and 31) and to vacate the Nov. 16 program by means of adding extra races on other days.
Closing day for 2024 will now be Nov. 2, dovetailing with the second day of the Breeders' Cup simulcast.
The request was made to get a jump on racino construction. A temporary gaming facility will go up before the permanent one at a later date.
Melissa Helton, the president and general manager at Fairmount, acknowledged “there's not a lot of horse experience” in the new ownership group, “so all of us have been helping out, [and] I think we're finally at that point where we're going to see slots.”
Purses for 2025 at Fairmount are projected to be $5.5 million, Helton said.
No corresponding 2025 purse figure for Hawthorne was stated at the meeting.
Illinois Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association president Jim Watkins, who represents horsemen at Fairmount, told the IRB that his organization concurs with the new Fairmount regime on race dates and a vision for the future.
Watkins said a contract is in place through the current year, and that a renewal is in the works that he believes will include keeping Fairmount open for off-season training.
“I'm very confident that with the resources available to Accel, the new ownership, the backside is going to look a lot different” in 2025, Watkins said.
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