Turf Paradise cancels 2020-2021 meeting

The owner of Turf Paradise racetrack in Phoenix, Ariz., told the Arizona Racing Commission during a teleconference meeting on Thursday that the track will not run its scheduled 2020-21 race meet, citing the coronavirus pandemic.

The comment by Jerry Simms, the owner of the track since 2000, came during a discussion of an Arizona Racing Commission agenda item on a plan by Turf Paradise to modify its live racing dates for a meet initially scheduled to start on Oct. 17. Before the commission could vote on or table the item, Simms asked to speak and told the commission that the meet would not be run at all.

“I’d like to give the horsemen as much notice as possible and not wait for another meeting,” Simms said. “We are not going to run this next meet because of the coronavirus. We are not going to take on that liability.”

:: To stay up to date, follow us on: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

The request comes when Arizona is gradually reducing its coronavirus cases after becoming one of the most highly impacted states in the U.S. earlier this summer. This week, the state reported that its positivity rate had declined to 12.5 percent, after hitting as high as 25 percent in late June and early July, amidst as many as 4,000 new cases each day.

But the decision by Turf Paradise also comes amid a prolonged dispute with the state’s horsemen’s group over a wide variety of issues, including the importation of simulcasts, the track’s commitment to live racing, and a decision earlier this year to end the live meet early at the beginning of the coronavirus spread and require horsemen to vacate the track within 30 days of the closure.

Michael Napier, the legal counsel for the Arizona Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, said prior to Simms appearing on the teleconference that the horsemen’s group had “doubts about the good-faith efforts” by Turf Paradise to negotiate with horsemen over the terms of the upcoming meet. He said that Turf Paradise had already asked trainers to remove their silks and their foal papers from the track at the end of the coronavirus-shortened meet earlier this year, and had been selling equipment necessary to run a live meet in the future.

Napier had also asked the commission to deny the motion by Turf Paradise to change its dates for the 2020-21 meet, saying the new plan would be short of the 150 live race dates required by law. The request in front of the commission would have called for 121 days of live racing.

“We don’t have an agreement, and the track has not sought out any agreement with the HBPA over the dates that they are now seeking,” Napier had said. “That being the case, the commission is bound by Arizona law.”

Turf Paradise, which first opened in 1956 on a barren patch of desert land well north of the city’s center, has failed to establish itself as a major entertainment option in Phoenix despite the enormous growth of the metropolitan area over the last four decades and the region’s mild winter weather. Because Turf Paradise’s purses are low compared to tracks in neighboring states, Arizona horsemen have generally sent their stock in the summer to tracks in Northern Arizona, Northern California, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, and Colorado.

The dispute between the track and horsemen deepened last year when Monarch Content Management, the simulcast marketing arm of The Stronach Group, refused to allow the signals it controls to be distributed to off-track betting companies controlled by Arizona Downs, a track near Prescott that re-opened two years ago. That decision, which was based on objections by Monarch about Arizona Downs’s decision to license OTBs near those already licensed by Turf Paradise, resulted in the Arizona Department of Gaming banning the import of any simulcast signals assigned to Monarch in late January.

Accordingly, Arizona horseplayers have been unable since early this year to bet on Santa Anita, Gulfstream, and Golden Gate, among other major tracks, costing horsemen and Turf Paradise money that served as a reserve for purses and live-racing operating funds.