THOROUGHBRED INDUSTRY IS FADING IN THE STRETCH : Wolfson Critique Paints a Dismal Picture, Claims Racing Won’t Help Itself

OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. —  EVANGELINE DOWNS CLOSES, OWNERS FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY

--Headline, Daily Racing Form

CALDER BANKRUPTCY?

--Headline, the Blood-Horse

The industry should be ashamed of its progress in this field (medication).

--W.T. Bishop, president, Oaklawn Park

Our inquiry into the racing industry has left one overall--and negative--impression; horse racing as a form of legalized gambling in New Jersey is in serious trouble.

--New Jersey State Commission of Investigation

SALE BY DEFAULT

--Headline, the Blood-Horse, about the collapse of a blood-stock agency

Average price (of 1986 yearlings sold through mid-September) is $41,782, down 15.5% through the same period of 1985.

--the Blood-Horse

It is hard to find a race track of any sort (in the East) that is truly prospering today. . . . We do not believe that we are overstating the gravity of this situation by terming it a crisis.

--Timothy T. Capps, the Thoroughbred Record

So when Louis Wolfson publishes a 274-page critique of horse racing, as he did recently, it should not shock the sport’s Establishment.

But it does. Because Wolfson points fingers and names names. Most of the names occupy high places and they largely choose not to respond to Wolfson’s charges.

His observations are the dark side of a moribund industry that won’t be portrayed during NBC’s four-hour national telecast of the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita Saturday. The television show will emphasize the quality of the international fields for the seven races, the amount of money--$10 million--at stake and the beauty of Santa Anita, that magnificent annex to the San Gabriel Mountains.

An irony would be if one of Wolfson’s horses wins a Breeders’ Cup race. The 74-year-old owner-breeder and his family have two horses running--Qualify in the $1-million Juvenile and Outstandingly in the $1-million Distaff. Outstandingly won the second Breeders’ Cup race when the series began at Hollywood Park in 1984.

Wolfson and his wife, Patrice, the daughter of Hall of Fame trainer Hirsch Jacobs, have never won a richer stake than the Breeders’ Cup, but they’ve won more important races.

They bred and raced Affirmed, who swept the Triple Crown in 1978 and twice was voted horse of the year. In 1965, six years after he entered racing and before the Eclipse Awards consolidated the voting, Wolfson’s Roman Brother was selected as horse of the year by the Daily Racing Form.

Although racing has been rewarding for Wolfson, he has gone after it with a blunderbuss. “I love the game as much as I ever have,” he said at his Long Island home. “But it is sad what has happened. I hate to think what might be left by the time my grandchildren might want to get into the business. I’ve done what I’ve done because I want to see the sport saved before it is too late.”

Wolfson said that if the trend of the last 20 years continues for the next 20, “the thoroughbred racing and breeding industry simply will not be able to survive. There are about 85 race tracks in the United States now. I can see where there might not be 25 in another 10 years.”

The title of Wolfson’s treatise is “The Future Looks Bleak for the Thoroughbred Racing & Breeding Industry . . . Can It Survive?”

Wolfson printed 400 of the soft-cover, manuscript-style reports and spent close to $2,000 in postage, sending them to racing leaders, state racing commissioners and turf writers.

In his report, Wolfson makes these points:

--Attendance and betting at race tracks in 1985 were marginally down from 1984, which was also not a good year, and the ’85 figures are worse still if inflation is considered.

--For the first five months of 1986, national attendance was off 7.8% and betting down 5.4%

--Although $600 million in purses was distributed in 1985, the cost of keeping an estimated 60,000 horses in training resulted in a loss of $500 million for owners.

--The bellwethers of racing, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park in California and Belmont Park and Aqueduct in New York, have suffered serious business declines, some of them double-digit drops over previous years.

--Because of added competition--mainly, state lotteries--horse racing’s share of the gambling dollar in the United States has dropped from 28% in 1971 to 10% now.

As for culprits, few racing organizations escaped Wolfson’s aim:

--Management at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. “Personal and personnel battles and the ill will between the Southern California race tracks have been very costly to the industry. They have not worked together in effectuating inter-track wagering, which has been so successful in Northern California, New Jersey and other states, or in working for other positive changes, such as the lowering of taxes, which could improve the revenue of the industry.”

--The Jockey Club in New York, the New York Racing Assn. (which operates three of the state’s four thoroughbred tracks) and the Thoroughbred Racing Assn. (a trade group). “Their principal interest is in increasing their power and influence, not in doing what is best for the industry. The members of these three boards could not put on a one-month racing card.”

--The Breeders’ Cup. “ . . . has tremendous possibilities for the industry, but these three organizations (Jockey Club, NYRA and TRA) are trying to control it.”

--Ogden Mills (Dinny) Phipps, former chairman of the NYRA and now chairman of the Jockey Club. “When he resigned as chairman of the NYRA, many people were encouraged by his statement that he was going to devote his time to his business. Dinny Phipps has used his position for the benefit of his businesses by encouraging people to provide funds to them, such as did one horse owner, also a principal in a race track. He placed $3 million at the disposal of Bessemer so that he could get favors in the horse industry, in return.” Phipps is director of the Bessemer Securities Corp., a firm that controls assets for many branches of the Phipps family.

--New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whom Wolfson supported and whom he expected to make sweeping changes at the New York tracks. In a letter to Cuomo in 1984, Wolfson said: “ . . . The experience that I have had is such that I feel that I have been ‘used.’ . . . You said in our conversation at Saratoga last year and more recently at Belmont that we should get together and continue our discussions; but I do not see any need to pursue these matters due to the decisions that have already been made.”

--Tom Meeker, president of Churchill Downs, where Wolfson believes the Kentucky Derby hasn’t been marketed properly. “He has been legal counsel to Churchill for years, with very little experience in operating a race track. Since becoming its chief executive officer, he has shown lack of stability in his irresponsible statements, which reflect both his lack of experience and poor judgment. . . . By their actions, both Churchill and the Breeders’ Cup appear to be more interested in and concerned about what is best for the big commercial breeders and less about what is best for the entire industry.”

--The Daily Racing Form. “With its monopoly, the Daily Racing Form has given ‘the deep-freeze’ treatment to articles that were critical of the paper’s friends and advertisers. It has whitewashed major racing stories and every incident involving questionable practices.”

Most of those mentioned by Wolfson either chose not to comment or spoke briefly. Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, pressured by the California Horse Racing Board, say they are close to an agreement that may lead to an intertrack wagering bill for Southern California.

“I don’t want to get into a problem with Louis Wolfson,” Phipps said. “What he says doesn’t make sense and is not factual.”

Asked specifically about Wolfson’s accusation regarding the $3-million investor, Phipps declined to comment.

Recently, William Eimicke, an aide to Cuomo with whom Wolfson dealt, made this comment: “I like Lou, but I think he is frustrated. A lot of what he proposed didn’t work out, so he has chosen to blame a lot of people.”

Through a Churchill Downs spokesman, Meeker said: “I have no comment. I don’t want to elevate what Wolfson has said.”

D.G. Van Clief, executive director of the Breeders’ Cup, doesn’t believe that his group is being “controlled” by other racing organizations.

“We feel the Breeders’ Cup has a broad base,” Van Clief said. “There’s a wide cross-section of breeders on our board. There are bound to be some overlaps, but we don’t think that track managements have any influence in what we try to do.”

Wolfson himself has overlaps. He is the second-largest shareholder, after Marje Everett, in Hollywood Park. Last year, he and family members unsuccessfully attempted a take-over of publicly held Churchill Downs for $46.1 million.

Besides contributing $42,700 to Cuomo’s 1982 gubernatorial campaign, Wolfson offered $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee if Cuomo could deliver the keynote speech at the party’s 1984 convention.

Wolfson also offered to make a personal, interest-free loan of between $50,000 and $75,000 to Andrew Cuomo, if he would remain with his father’s organization.

The Democrats did not accept Wolfson’s money, but Cuomo made the keynote speech anyway, and Andrew Cuomo still left his father to enter private law practice.

In 1967, in a matter not related to racing, Wolfson was found guilty by the federal government of failing to file a registration statement for stock that was sold by him and his family. Wolfson was fined $100,000 and served nine months of a one-year sentence.

He maintains that the government never suggested that the case involved fraud and still believes that he was the victim of a seldom enforced section of the law.

Wolfson, believing that a substantial reduction in the state’s wagering tax--from 7% to 3%--would solve some of California’s problems, said that greater cooperation between Hollywood Park and Santa Anita is imperative. He indicated that he might take a more active role in the affairs of Hollywood Park.

“Lou Wolfson got us off of our tails,” said an official from Churchill Downs. “We’ve spent more than $12 million in improving the physical plant in the last two years. And members of the board and friends of the track--not Wolfson--have been buying up large blocks of stock lately. The stock is very healthy. It’s gone up to about 112, which is double what it was three years ago.”

Wolfson was asked about the propriety of trying to get Cuomo to restructure New York racing.

“First of all, Cuomo sought me out and I gave what I thought was a nominal contribution,” Wolfson said. “After that, I was impressed by his openness and he seemed like a first-class individual.

“As for his son, I had never met him, but people I respected said he had a lot on the ball. What disappointed me about Cuomo, though, is that he said he would make a full study on New York racing and then react. To this day, he’s never done that.”

Wolfson’s general cure-all for racing would be the formation of a national body whose purpose would be to unite the tracks, horsemen and state racing commissions. It’s a Utopian idea that has been suggested before.

Timothy T. Capps wrote recently in the Thoroughbred Record: “A national spokesman or national body purporting to represent the broad interests of racing but lacking political clout and local significance would, in our view, be ineffective in resolving such conflicts and bringing about coalition.”

Asked to name someone he considers qualified to head a national racing group, Wolfson said: “Someone as knowledgeable as Mr. Kilroe, but younger, would be what we need. I heard Alan Balch (former assistant general manager at Santa Anita) speak at Saratoga about racing’s problems last summer. He impresses me more than any racing executive around.”

Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, who is in his 70s, is Santa Anita’s vice president for racing. Kilroe was flattered at being mentioned by Wolfson, but he questioned the concept.

“I’m not sure a czar for racing would work any better than it has for the other sports,” Kilroe said. “Look at the National Football League. Pete Rozelle is supposed to be the czar of czars. Lately, there even seem to be some chinks in his armor.”