Switch to the mobile version of this page.

Arkansas Times

Arkansas Blog

« Fire up the grill, an open line and… | Liberals, conservatives and empathy »

Monday, April 30, 2012

Horse racing and casinos, a sometimes deadly mix

Posted by Max Brantley on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 6:16 AM

The New York Times has a gruesome report today on thoroughbred horse racing in the era of a proliferation of race track casinos. The dramatic increase in horse race purses from the casino money has encouraged racing by unfit horses dosed heavily with pain medication.

To survive amid a riot of new, technologically advanced gambling options, track owners have increasingly succumbed to the gambling industry’s offer to sweeten racing purses with slot machine revenue. But if casinos promise to prop up a struggling sport, they can also erode the loyalty that owners and trainers feel toward their horses, turning them, in the words of Maggi Moss, a leading owner, into “trading cards for people’s greed.”

The casinos’ impact is greatest at the sport’s low end, the so-called claiming races, a world away from the bluegrass pageantry of Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. In the claiming ranks — where some of the cheapest horses fill starting gates at tracks like Aqueduct, Penn National, near Harrisburg, Pa., and Evangeline Downs in Louisiana — the casino money has upset the traditional racetrack balance of risk and reward.

Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs isn't mentioned in the report.

Tags: horse racing, casinos, Oaklawn Park

        
Tweet
Share

Speaking of...

Judge strikes down initiative law limits

April 2, 2013

by Max Brantley

I mentioned yesterday that a lawsuit was already cooking should the legislature pass a proposal being pushed by the two Arkansas casinos at West Memphis and Hot Springs to make it difficult to put initiated acts and amendments on the ballot. /more/
More »

Comments (11)

Showing 1-11 of 11

Add a comment

Subscribe to this thread:

By Email

With RSS

Showing 1-11 of 11

More by Max Brantley

Block that cliche: Beebe on the 2014 race for governor

Channel 4 has posted an interview with Gov. Mike Beebe on the race to succeed him in 2014: Variously, he said: * It will be a "donnybrook."
- by Max Brantley
- May 9, 2013
Lawsuit filed over Exxon Mobil pipeline spill damage

The first lawsuit has been filed over the rupture of the Exxon Mobil pipeline at Mayflower.
- by Max Brantley
- Apr 5, 2013
More »