NEWS
Maryland to look into Thoroughbred racing at Rosecroft
Posted: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:06 PM
by John Scheinman
With Rosecroft Raceway, once the leading harness racing track in Maryland, on the brink of extinction, the state soon will begin to examine the feasibility of racing thoroughbreds at the financially strapped Prince George’s County facility.
The state House of Delegates quietly passed a bill at the end of the spring legislative session establishing a task force to explore the concept, and the Maryland Racing Commission named David Clogg to be its representative on the eight-member panel during its monthly meeting on Tuesday in Cambridge.
“Who’s that lucky person want to be?” commission chairman John Franzone joked when looking for volunteers.
Representatives from Rosecroft, which opened in 1949, told the commission on Tuesday that the track could no longer afford to conduct live Standardbred racing. The commission approved a request by Kelley Rogers, president of track operator Cloverleaf Enterprises, to continue to offer harness and Thoroughbred simulcast wagering at Rosecroft while discontinuing live racing.
The track will host a limited number of sire and bred fund stakes races in November and December but no overnight racing.
Rosecroft, even moreso than the thoroughbred tracks in the state, has been unable to compete with racetracks in neighboring states that have been strengthened by the addition of slot machine revenue.
Any move to race thoroughbreds at Rosecroft would face significant hurdles, leaders in the state racing and breeding industries said.
First, the legislature would have to authorize a new license for thoroughbred racing (licenses have only been approved for Maryland Jockey Club tracks Pimlico and Laurel Park, the Maryland State Fair at Timonium, and an unbuilt track in Allegany County held by William Rickman Jr.) and the five-eighths-of-a-mile banked oval would have to be reconfigured for thoroughbred racing. That most likely would cost millions of dollars.
“They’d have to build a new racetrack,” said Cricket Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association. “Without slots, I don’t know who would come in and put up that kind of money.”
With or without thoroughbred racing, the fate of Rosecroft appears to rest with the result of a state referendum to legalize slot machines going before voters in November. While Rosecroft is not a potential site for slot machines if the referendum passes, the track stands to get an infusion in its purse fund. The constitutional amendment also calls for matching funds for any facilities redevelopment at the track, industry leaders said.
“If the referendum doesn’t pass, Rosecroft is done,” Franzone said. “From a history and tradition standpoint, we don’t know how close we are to losing it all. They’re on death’s door. If the referendum fails, [Rosecroft] could be an apartment complex.”
The racing commission on Tuesday also approved dates for the Maryland State Fair meet at Timonium this year, which will run August 22 through September 1 with seven days of live racing and three days of interstate simulcasting.
A 13-day summer race meet beginning August 8 at Laurel Park also was approved. The mini meet will feature ten days of live racing and two stakes races—the $50,000 Twixt Stakes for Maryland-bred three-year-old fillies on August 9 and the $50,000 Humphrey S. Finney Stakes for three -year-olds the following week.
Mary Louise Preis and Charles G. Tildon III, both appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley, joined the commission, replacing Gregory Barnhill and David Bramble, whose terms expired.
Preis is an attorney who served two terms in the House of Delegates. Tildon serves as director of marketing for United Way of Central Maryland.
John Scheinman is a Maryland-based Thoroughbred Times correspondent
