Arlington puts opening of backstretch on hold, unlikely to open meet as scheduled

Thoroughbred racing in Chicago is on deep hold early this spring.

Arlington has indefinitely pushed back the date it will allow horses onto its backstretch, and making the scheduled May 1 meet opening is something like a 50-1 shot.

Moreover, the coronavirus outbreak and all its racing ramifications has put into limbo difficult negotiations between Arlington and the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association over a contract that will govern the 2020 racing season – if or when it actually takes place.

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Arlington was scheduled to open its stable gates April 10 but has put an indefinite hold on that, track president Tony Petrillo said Monday. Petrillo said the scheduled May 1 opening is “highly unlikely when you look around at what’s going on right now.”

“To bring a bunch of people from different places into one location, I don’t see that happening in the near future,” Petrillo said.

This already was an unusual year for Thoroughbred racing in Chicago. Hawthorne typically would be conducting a winter-spring meet, but instead was running a harness meeting – that was shut down earlier this month – while beginning construction on what Hawthorne hopes and expects will be an on-track casino. Hawthorne contended it could much more easily run a Standardbred meet than a Thoroughbred meet during this initial phase of transforming its facility into a racino, although Hawthorne hasn’t yet been granted a casino license by the Illinois Gaming Board.

There are about 150 Thoroughbreds stabled at Hawthorne, and they are restricted to exercising in the barn. Other horsemen who intended to race at Arlington are stabled in downstate Illinois at Fairmount, which also has ceased racing, while other major Arlington outfits, like those of Larry Rivelli and Chris Block, are stuck, respectively, in Florida and Louisiana.

Meanwhile, it’s difficult to say what an Arlington meet would even look like at this point. Arlington and the ITHA were supposed to have agreed on a contract governing the 2020 season by Jan. 1 but could not come together and have entered a period of mediation mandated by the Illinois Racing Board. A mediation session that lasted the better part of eight horses took place earlier in March but produced nothing close to a resolution.

At issue is how Arlington will distribute limited purse money during the 2020 racing season. The ITHA insists overnight purses must be maximized to support everyday Illinois horsemen and has suggested curtailing Arlington’s proposed $3.3 million open-stakes program anchored by the Arlington Million card. Nearly all the Million-card purse money winds up in the hands of out-of-state trainers and owners and, the ITHA contends, offers little benefit to Illinois racing. Arlington insists the Million helps anchor the track’s brand and is an essential part of its racing season, and has been unwilling to budge on the open-stakes schedule.

Before the coronavirus began draining racing resources, Arlington anticipated paying purses of about $130,000 per day, but the amount of purse money is dwindling. Purse revenue generated from simulcast handle has cratered in March, and $850,000 in Illinois owners’ awards that came from the Illinois state government during 2019 is highly unlikely to be appropriated in 2020 given the current economic climate. A late opening could condense the number of days Arlington races and boost average daily purse. Still, negotiations between Arlington and the ITHA are nearly impossible to conduct now, because no one knows when Arlington will be able to race or how much purse money will be available.

“I don’t know how you make an agreement on anything when you’re shooting in the dark,” said ITHA executive director David McCaffrey.

All anyone really knows right now is that Illinois racing has gone dark.