Live horse racing is back on without the fans at a West Virginia track a few days after the facility was shut down due to the new coronavirus.
Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races announced Thursday that horse racing would resume Friday night, The Journal reported. But the track’s grandstands, grounds and casino remain closed to the public, which can watch the eight-race card online or through the track’s simulcast partners.
The facility closed Tuesday night after Gov. Jim Justice ordered casinos around the state to shut down.
“It was actually made clear to us through the governor’s office that the mandated casino shutdown was not intended to apply to horse racing,” said Erich Zimny, the facility’s vice president of racing and sports operations.
The track said it will limit the number of people in the track’s barn area to horse owners, trainers and other essential workers.
Due to the virus, the track has postponed the Charles Town Classic, which was scheduled for April 18. No rescheduled date was announced.
The state’s other horse track at Mountaineer Casino in Chester does not start its 2020 live racing schedule until late April.
A former West Virginia horse racing commissioner says photos posted online of a euthanized thoroughbred racing horse surrounded by trash in a landfill should be a wakeup call for state leaders.
Bill Phillips served for years on the commission before being replaced by Gov. Jim Justice in 2017. He told the Charleston Gazette-Mail that the commission is underfunded and understaffed.
The commission’s executive director, Joe Moore, said the thoroughbred named Bridget Moloney was catastrophically injured during a September race and couldn’t be saved. He said there are no state rules for the disposal of racehorse remains, but Mountaineer Park Racetrack has procedures, and he says they weren’t followed in this case.
The commission took no formal action against the track, and a sheriff’s investigation ruled out animal cruelty.
After almost 15 years doing without, revenue dollars are flowing back into West Virginia’s horse and dog racing industries. The legislature came through on a promise made more than a decade ago, and men and women within the racing industry are excited at the possibility of a boom in business. As part of our occasional series, “Effective from Passage,” we explore the potential effects of Senate Bill 13 (SB 13), which went into effect last week.
One of Jefferson County, West Virginia’s top three lead trainers is Tim Grams. He and his wife Judy run Grams Racing Stable in Charles Town.
They have 50 horses on their farm and 40 horses at the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races. A good portion of those horses belong to clients, but most belong to the Grams.
“We work with all of them every day,” Tim Grams said. “We get up probably right around 4:30 in the morning. My wife, she gets to the racetrack before I do and checks out everything. My wife gets the whole operation started in the morning before I get there.”
Grams and his wife have been doing this work since 1989, and they employ about 14 people in their training operation. This year, Grams’ horse named Runnin’toluvya won a major race called the Charles Town Classic. Grams’ horse was the first West Virginia horse to win the title since its inception in 2009.
The Charles Town Classic is what’s called a Grade II race, which falls just behind a Grade I race, like the Kentucky Derby. The Charles Town Classic was awarded Grade II status in 2012.
Credit Coady Photography
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Tim Grams’ horse Runnin’toluvya won the 2019 Charles Town Classic.
Trainers like Grams, as well as breeders, owners, groomers, jockeys, veterinarians, and several more could feel the effects of SB 13.
The bill returns $11 million annually to the state’s four racetracks.
Charles Town Races in Jefferson County and Mountaineer Park in Hancock County race thoroughbreds, while Mardi Gras in Kanawha County and Wheeling Island in Ohio County race greyhounds.
That $11 million will be divided and given to each track throughout the next year on a monthly basis, and it will continue every year after unless the West Virginia Legislature decides otherwise.
The funds can be used to support more race days or employ new people or potentially provide raises. It could help support more breeders, and it can affect the winnings on a horse or dog. Grams believes it could also provide incentive for more people in the industry to do business in West Virginia.
“I really think that that’s going to bring owners back into this business,” Grams explained. “There’ll be more opportunities to race with extra days, and already with the legislation passing, you can already see that the tempo [has] changed around here, and people seem a little bit more relaxed, because they’re not worrying about stuff every day.”
“More than anything, it was the legislature honoring a commitment,” Senate Finance Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, said. Blair was the lead sponsor of SB 13.
More than a decade ago, in 2005, West Virginia faced a large deficit – the state’s Workers Compensation Debt Reduction Fund was $4 billion in the hole. Blair said, at the time, the state Legislature was looking for ways they could fill that hole, and they looked to areas like the racing industry.
“They were just a pot of money sitting out there that could be reached into to help fund that $4 billion unfunded liability,” Blair explained.
The legislature pulled from other industries, too, such as coal, but lawmakers promised that once the debt was paid off, they would no longer tap into those revenue streams.
And that’s eventually what happened. The racing industry is the last one to see dollars returned.
Grams said the lost dollars over that 14-year period affected his business and many others, because fewer people were coming to West Virginia to breed, train, or race.
“Probably the first couple years, it wasn’t that big of a change. But after that, they look over and see Maryland’s doing great, Pennsylvania’s doing great, and the next thing, they take their mares from your farm. So, with all the other business up and starting to thrive, our revenue as a whole, it went down,” Grams said. “So, you know, it was harder to bring people in the state when we didn’t have the money, and we didn’t have anything to offer them.”
And SB 13 faced some pushback within the legislature. A handful of lawmakers tried to reroute the $11 million to support education.
But Blair argued the revenue wasn’t the legislature’s to bargain with anymore since the workers comp debt had been paid off.
“My number one reason was to keep the legislature’s promise,” Blair explained. “But the number two is, [the racing industry] is an economic engine that drives both tourism and the entertainment industry…but then agriculture as well.”
The most recent economic impact study done on West Virginia’s racing industry was conducted by West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research in 2014.
It found that the thoroughbred and greyhound racing industries in West Virginia contribute more than $320 million annually to the state’s economy and supports 7,300 jobs.
A bill to eliminate the West Virginia Greyhound Breeding Development Fund is making its way through the House. It’s been on second reading, or the amendment stage, since Tuesday, but due to a laundry list of amendments and some heated debate, consideration was postponed until Thursday.
Senate Bill 437 eliminates the Greyhound Breeding and Development Fund, putting some $14 million back into the state’s Excess Lottery Revenue Fund to be used for appropriations by the legislature. The fund is made up of a percentage of the money from table games at the state’s two greyhound racetrack casinos in Wheeling and Nitro. The appropriations help pay for dog breeding as well as bet winnings.
The House considered one amendment to the bill Thursday, which came from Delegate Jeff Eldridge, a Democrat from Lincoln County. Rather than getting rid of the fund altogether, his amendment would instead look to another funding source to help support the state’s budget crisis – horse racing.
His amendment would take half of the money from the greyhound breeding fund and the other half from a similar fund set up for the horse racing industry. Eldridge says by doing this, it’ll keep the greyhound industry alive in the state and save some of his constituents’ jobs.
“There’s some discrepancy a’how many jobs this is, well if it’s one job in my district, I’m gonna stand up and fight for it,” Eldridge said, “and if I could offer 50 more bad amendments to this thing, I would. Everybody gets up here and stands for their district and what they stand for. If we can’t band together as a group of people to fight for your district, then we’re here for the wrong reasons.”
Officials from the greyhound racing industry estimate eliminating the fund would cost nearly 1,700 jobs in West Virginia.
House Finance Chair Delegate Eric Nelson says he understands Eldridge’s concerns, but he says the industry is dwindling and the state needs the money. He spoke against the amendment.
“Twenty years ago, the racing industry for our greyhounds, and really thoroughbreds, was thriving much greater than it is now, but over these last few years especially, there’s been a tremendous decline,” Nelson said, “and I think I stated the other day that just in Wheeling alone, how the participation at the track, as far as people attending, has gone from 900,000 twenty years ago down to less than 20 last year, or maybe it was 2013 according to study. I mean it’s very difficult times, and it’s the prioritization.”
The amendment failed on a roll call vote of 39 to 57. Senate Bill 437 will be on third reading and up for a final vote in the chamber tomorrow.
The West Virginia Racing Commission has rejected Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack & Resort’s proposal to end December horse racing.
The commission says Mountaineer should instead reduce the number of daily races throughout the year from nine to eight.
The East Liverpool Review reports that the commission on Friday accepted a hearing examiner’s opinion that said Mountaineer’s proposal should be denied.
Mountaineer’s proposal was prompted by concerns about reductions in its purse fund, competition from racetrack casinos in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and a shrinking field size.
A new state law will cut an estimated $2.5 million annually from Mountaineer’s purse fund. The law redirects 10 percent of video lottery revenue appropriations to thoroughbred and greyhound breeders and purse funds to the State Excess Lottery Revenue Fund.
