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I had a very interesting and uplifting event in my life yesterday. As you know from this blog (the thousands of you who actually read it), I am the publisher and editor of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most entertaining and informative horse racing newspaper. We put out 14 issues last year and have definitely created a buzz in the horse racing community. What we haven’t yet accomplished is to attract sufficient advertising to make the paper a profitable enterprise. This is not unusual in Canadian publishing; I was warned that it would take at least two years  to break even. 

So yesterday, Down The Stretch art director Gord Steventon and I embarked on a project designed to increase our advertising.  On the east side of highway 7, directly across from Woodbine Racetrack are a couple of car dealerships, each employing the Woodbine name - Woodbine Pontiac and Woodbine Toyota. Figuring that each of these enterprises wishes to identify itself geographically with the track, Gord and I marched proudly into the lobby, our specs, rates and latest issue neatly packaged to be handed over to the presiding general manager.

At each place - Pontiac and Toyota, we were greeted by pleasant young women at reception, each advising us that neither the general manager, nor the sales manager was in.  So we left our package and took a business card, promising we’d call later. Actually, I said I would harass them mercilessly and then Gord grabbed me by the collar to minimize any further public relations disaster.

That’s when I had my brainstorm.

“Let’s go to 401-Dixie Nissan!” I exclaimed.

“Why?” asked Gord

“Greg Carrasco,” I answered. “He does all those commercials on 680News. Maybe he’ll recognize me.”

As it turns out, the 401 and Dixie is ground zero for car dealerships. The Nissan office is a compact bright place, and as soon as we entered the lobby, I saw the instantly recognizable Greg Carrasco in a glassed office behind the receptionist. Carrasco does his own ads on tv and on 680News in over the top, tons of personality fashion. His charasmatic smile and close cropped beard make him one of those guys who stands out in your memory.

“Tell him it’s Peter Gross from 680 News to see him,” I instruct the young lady and Gord and I were instantly welcomed to Carasco’s office. I laid out my battle plan .

“You’re an unusual guy and so is Down The Stretch,” I began. “We’re looking for an important automobile dealership to feature in our advertising.”

Carrasco flashed a humour-filled smile.

“You’ve got three problems here,” he warned. ” One, I own horses, but I don’t like horse racing. Two, we never buy print. And three, this is very bad time for the economy.”

I’m not that easily discouraged.

“Do you have your own horses?” I asked and almost immediately, Carrasco had opened up a file on his desktop to show me his wife and daughter on a couple of beautiful riding horses.

“I assume you’re opposed to horse slaughter,” I said and I noticed a marketable change in his posture.

“Of course,” he answered. “My wife is very much into animal welfare.”

That was the opening I needed.  I pointed out that Down The Stretch is the voice against horse slaughter in Canada, that we had won the Sovereign Award for a feature story we wrote on Alex Brown, the most skilled advocate for the anti-horse slaughter movement. I showed him the three articles from our most recent issue that dealt with the subject. I was seriously implying that if he was really a proponent of animal welfare and safety, he needed to put the 401 Dixie Nissan money where his mouth was.

And then the clincher. As he dealt over the phone with a minor customer problem, I looked under the desk and saw clearly the real Greg Carrasco - he was wearing mismatched socks.

When he got off the phone, I confronted him.

“You’re wearing two different socks.”

“That’s right. I like being odd,” he responded proudly.

“Take a look at our paper,” I told him. “We’re different too.” And then, for the next five minutes, he turned the pages. I think he could see the kind of paper we’re putting out.

“I have an idea, ” he announced. “I’ll buy a full page. Just one issue. I’ll know very soon if it works or not.  I’ll do a three-quarter page ad and my wife will write a small ‘advertorial’ on animal welfare.”

Gord and I had to stifle our ecstacy as we left. I think it was probably a first for both of us. At least the first for me since the early 60s when I made 10 cents a paper selling Globe and Mail subscriptions door to door.

By the way, if you’re running a car dealership, you might want to be privy to something Carrasco told us. He became manager of 401 Dixie Nissan about five years ago and experimented by buying one week of ads on 680News.

“The next week was the biggest we had had all year,” he admitted. 

Yeah, well wait until the week after your ad shows up in Down The Stretch, Greg!

Like all gamblers, I often exist in a state of what I should have done and yesterday was a great example. The latest issue of my horse racing paper, Down The Stretch arrived and it was intentional that a lovely picture of Chantal Sutherland was on the cover. Call it my arrested development, but I endeavor to have an image of Sutherland in the paper as often as possible. The teen magazines always put the Jonas Brothers or Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus on the front of their mags simply because it drives their sales.

Chantal Sutherland is a profoundly beautiful woman, but more to my purposes, she’s a very skilled and determined jockey. We have a story in this month’s Down The Stretch about her winning a Stakes race at Golden Gate Fields and, in my editorial spot, I poiinted out that I spend a great deal of my leisure time seeing how she’s riding at Santa Anita.

So imagine my chagrin - as a devoted fan of Chantal - to see the results from yesterday at sun baked Santa Anita.  Chantal had three rides. She finished third on 2.90-1 shot Dapper Gene in the first, was fourth on Unusual Strike in the second and in the fifth (this is where it gets interesting) was aboard a horse with the delightful name of Talktoomuch. Apparently the connections of Talktoomuch didn’t talk too much, because Talktoomuch went off at 33.50-1 in the field of 12 fillies and mares running for a claiming price of $10,000.  Sutherland had the five year-old daughter of Royal Academy in the mix early in the miel and a sixteenth race on ProTrack. Talktoomuch was fourth at the three quarters, about a length and a half off the lead..and Chantal was barely moving a muscle.  With very little urging, Talktoomuch made an inspiring move on the final turn and came into the stretch with a two lengthlead…Only in the final furlong did Chantal really go to work,  as Lovely Olivia, a 16-1 shot came late with a mild threat. Talktoomuch won by a length and a quarter giving Sutherland her 7th win in 49 races…that’s a win percentage of better than 14%, quite extraordinary considering that she’s very much an interloper down there and not necessarily getting many ‘live’horses. Talktoomuch paid $69 to win..the exactor was $954.40 and the superfecta for $1  - $56,952.50. All you had to do was key Chantal on top for $990!

I also noticed that her boyfriend Mike Smith won the 7th race on Blue Exit….so the couple probably celebrated their success last night..

Another thing I saw in the replays. In the second race yesterday, the three horse was named Gretsky ( not Gretzky) . Gretsky went off at 29-1….couldnt make a good pass, didn’t know how to stickhandle through traffic, and was unable to light the lamp. Gretsky. no points on the day, finished fifth.

 But….you should know, I am in the habit of betting on Chantal Sutherland on everything she rides. She was awesome last summer at Woodbine, bringing in longshots like your mail man brings you bills.

Why didn’t I put down $5 win/place on Talktoomuch!

There seems to be glimmer of hope for Fort Erie Racetrack, which has been balancing on the edge of oblivion lately. The owner, Nordic Gaming Corp., is claiming losses of at least $3million in each of the past four years and has indicated that if someone doesn’t help subsidize that red ink, they won’t continue horse racing at the 111 year old border track. Yesterday, the Fort Erie Economic and Tourism Corporation made a $35 million offer to Nordic to buy the track and operate it as a not for profit initiative…but this deal won’t work if the provincial government doesn’t put up the money. The Tourism group wants the province to fund the project with the property acting as collateral.

For Erie Race Track is the biggest industry in the town of 30,000. The track employs 350 people; Nordic announced in December that at least 190 would be laid off in March if there is no racing in 2009.

There are also between 1000 and 2000 people who count on Fort Erie to race their low level horses. Fort Erie offers a lot of claiming races for horses worth less than $10,000, horses that would have few opportunities to compete at Woodbine.

Used to be, Fort Erie was the place for the old timers to go camp for a month or so when the Woodbine meet closed down and the major league racing went to the border. But for the last 20 years or so, Woodbine has raced straight through from April to December, leaving Fort Erie with the leftover, less valuable stock. Woodbine sold Fort Erie to Nordic several years ago.  Even so, Fort Erie has always been a useful option for many trainers and owners not certain of the quality of their horses. It has also been an important place for up and coming trainers and jockeys to learn their craft. Closing of the track would leave dozens of riders with virtually no place to work.

 So $35 million to keep a vital industry still beating, saving up to 2000 jobs. Kind of looks like petty cash compared to the $4 Billion bailout the feds gave the car industry.

This will seem a little incestuous, but the Down The Stretch blog was born after Fan590 Sports Director Doug Faraway realized I was publishing a racing paper called Down The Stretch. ( My lawyers are working feverishly on a variety of litigious acitivities concerning copyright infringements, though they do wonder about me suing myself).

We’ve put out 14 issues of Down The Stretch and number 15 is due on Friday, January 22. Just to give you a quick preview, the first issue of 2009 will have an update from Perry Lefko on the Fort Erie situation - right now the possibility of racing at the border landmark is not great. We also have stories on local jockeys winning in warmer climates around the globe; Chantal Sutherland has never lost at Golden Gate Fields and Eurico Rosa da Silva started his winter in Singapore with a controversial win on his first mount.

Regular writer Keith McCalmont gets a lot of face time in the next issue, summing up the final day of Harness Racing at Woodbine in 2008, then covering Generation Next, the upcoming young drivers who will dominate the standardbred side for the next decade or two.

There’s also a couple of stories, one good, one bad about the state of horse slaughter. Stakes winner Clever Allemont was rescued from a dreadful fate, but harness horses in Quebec aren’t so lucky.

As for the on-going status of Down The Stretch (www.downthestretchnewspaper.com)  let’s all bless Mila and Tony Kalloo. I’m not embarassed to admit that advertising revenue in 2008 didn’t quite match expenses. I was told there could be two years of bleeding before the black ink appeared. Mila and Tony are the publishers, who anted up big-time shortly after winning $16 million in the last Super-7 draw of 2006.  A week ago, I went hat in hand to the Kalloos, advising them of a financial shortfall and they offered not just encouragement  and cash, but a huge plate of lasgana, created from scratch by Mila.

Upon gifting me with a cheque sufficient enough to get the paper through another year, Tony gave me some orders ( If you knew how much he’s put into the paper, you’d agree he has this right!).

“You have to create a higher profile for the paper,” he suggested. “Get some radio ads. Make a tv commercial.”

So that is my next assignment. I’m trying to parlay my most excellent status here at the Fan590 and 680News into a series of ads for Down The Stretch. You’ll be hearing these in the immediate future as add-ons to the traffic. Why after traffic, you ask? Because that’s when the most people are listening.

I have also initiated a conversation with HPI, the high-number channel on digital tv that presents the horse races to susbscribers for the purpose of betting on horses around the world. I was pleasantly surprised by their generous rates and should have an eye-pleasing, fast-paced 30 second boast about Down The Stretch runnning in the spring, ideally conciding with the start of the Thoroughbred racing season.

This is quite the life, being a major publisher. Now I know what Hearst and Murdoch feel like. 
 

That is quite the controversial press release issued by Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) yesterday. For weeks, Woodbine and the Ontario Harness Horse Association have been at each other’s throats thanks to a contract that expired at the end of 2008. The Harness group attempted to boycott the entry box, but when most of the races filled anyway, OHHA called off the boycott, citing a desire to negotiate “in good faith.”

 That ‘good faith’ is being assailed today as Woodbine has severed all ties with OHHA which claims to represent harness horsemen and women in all negotiating circumstances. You can feel the contempt in the missive issued by WEG:

WEG finds it regrettable that OHHA continues to act in bad faith by, among other things, attempting to engage third parties to interfere with WEG’s private commercial matters.

WEG is in receipt of a letter sent by OHHA on January 5, 2009 ( one day after members voted to call off the boycott of WEG racing) to every Member of Provincial Parliament in which OHHA requests that MPPs instruct the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation to withhold WEG’s share of slot machine revenue until such time as WEG contracts with OHHA.

This latest action by OHHA constitutes a serious interference with WEG’s economic and contractual relations with OLG and may amount to inducing breach of contract. A cease and desist letter has been forwarded to OHHA today by our lawyers.

These are further actions by an organization with which WEG simply cannot, and will not, continue to do business. OHHA has demonstrated a pattern of bad faith and a desire to harm WEG’s business and the sport of horse racing in general.

Accordingly, WEG has determined that it will have no further discussions with OHHA in connection with a new contract. Instead, WEG will focus its efforts on contracting with horse people that race at Woodbine and Mohawk racetracks and share WEG’s vision for honest, exciting, quality horse racing.

Until such time as WEG is under contract with such a group, we reiterate our commitment to guarentee the revenue sharing arrangements and purse contributions stipulated in the Access Agreements. WEG will also continue to share slots revenue with horsepeople as it has commmitted to under contract with OLG

 Trying hard to be a neutral observer, I find it difficult to understand OHHA’s action - trying to persuade MPP’s to empower the OLG to withhold money that Woodbine was entitled to. This plan had no chance at success - was it just a way to provoke WEG?

WEG’s letter is extreme. The insinuation that OHHA has “a desire to harm…the sport of horse racing in general…” is probably a little overstated.  I doubt that OHHA’s intent is to hurt racing; but their take on the situation is sure diametrically opposite to Woodbine’s.

These are very tough times. Anyone with a job or method of earning enough to pay the rent or mortgage needs to be grateful for that. Woodbine offers the largest purse for harness racing in Canada and more than most tracks in the United States.  Horse people racing at the Rexdale track can make a good living. The money flows down to the assistant trainers, grooms, vets, blacksmiths, equipment makers, etc.

OHHA had a couple of gripes and while they’re worth discussing, do they justify a war? OHHA wants the right to stand by their man if any of their members is barred from Woodbine for a drugging offence. Woodbine spins that to say they have a stronger  commitment to honest racing. OHHA wants a better deal  on the cash that comes from betting on other tracks by satellite during the winter.  This may amount to a few million dollars one way or the other, but Woodbine is offering $80 million in purses for 2009….why ignore the huge pie while fighting over the tiny biscotti?

In the schoolyard, it’s nice to see a kid brave enough to stand up to the bully. But if the bully is the best thing that ever happened to the kids, why would you want to piss him off? 

I’ve got three stories today about gamblers who thought they’d won and got nothing. First, the sorry tale of David Fasulo. In good faith, Fasulo entered a fantasy betting contest promoted by Woodbine. The challenge was to make mythical bets on 12 harness races on December 13.  From the onset, the track promised prize money of $10,000 - $6000 to the winner. As Fasulo, a HorsePlayer Interactive subscriber, watched the races that night, he saw many of his picks win. Until late in the evening, Woodbine was updating the standings on-line and Fasulo saw his name posted in first place. However, software screwups scrambled the process and Woodbine decided to call the contest off before the last race. To compensate those who had entered the contest, Woodbine deposited $10 into the acocunts of each of the 575 people who had played. I was one of the beneficiaries of the ten bucks, but Fasulo feels he’s entitled to much more. So far, he’s had no luck. Making this all the more strange, on New Year’s day, I was out at Woodbine, and at the bottom of the escalators that carry the bettors to the second floor was a large stand alone billboard promoting the Deecember 13 contest.  What stood out to me was the promise of $10,000 Guaranteed. What does the word ‘guarentee’ mean these days?

How about the Ontario Lottery Corporation? As if they hadn’t created enough grief for themselves in the last two years. It’s been shown that millions of dollars of winnings have been stolen from legitimate winners and cashed by corrupt and greedy terminal operators. Today, Thomas Noftall of Brampton has no faith in the OLG’s integrity. Noftall bought four $3 Fruit Smash scratch tickets. The scratch and win contest pays off if certain fruits all line up. On Noftall tickets, they did. As described on the tickets, his co-ordinated fruits promised him a $135,000 winfall. When he went to collect, he was told that his tickets were among 1,100 misprints - they weren’t really winners even if they appeared to be. The OLG is refusing to pay Noftall.

“We’re apologizing to everyone and anyone who feels they were at all confused or inconvenienced by this,” says the lottery in about as lame a response as you could imagine.

Thomas Noftall feels inconvenienced. Here’s a guy who has probably blown a lot on scratch tickets and suddenly he has a huge win in his hands. Get a lawyer Thomas.

Now, Noftall’s sad experience pales in comparison to that of Joel Ifergan of Montreal. Ifergan bought two Lotto Super 7 tickets moments before the 9:00 PM cutoff time. The tickets were printed and handed to him. He paid for them. The next day, to his extreme delight, Ifergan saw that he had all 7 correct numbers for ajackpot win of $13,500,000.

Loto Quebec had some very bad news for him. The tickets, though purchased at 8:59, did not  get processed until 9:00:07 - 7 seconds after the shutoff deadline.

Ifergan is being told he is not entitled to any payoff. Loto-Quebec does admit that  there is a 10-12 second transmission delay, which would mean Ifergan’s ticket was created before 9 pm..it just didn’t get through the system in time. If that could be seen as the Lottery’s error, Ifergan has a strong case.  I’m sure he has his lawyers working hard on this.

As someone in his late 50s, I come from a generation in which it was preached that ’the customer is always right.’ These gambling horror stories seem to suggest quite the opposite.

The moral…gambling is for losers. Take the money you would normally reserve for wanton betting and put it into something secure and reliable…like General Motors stock. 

My Horse Won!

That would normally be my boast when I’ve made a winning bet, but in this case, it actually means a horse I own came first. And I really need to qualify this. I own 1/100th of a trotter by the name of Son Of Paige. I’m involved with Harness Racing Canada, a venture directed by Paul Garafalo who arranges for people to get into the ownership side of horse racing with very little investment.  My initial cost was a mere $300. When I joined the syndicate last October, I very quickly felt as if my involvement was nothing more than a jinx for the five year old Son Of Paige. He broke stride in four of his next six races, was forced to qualify at least twice and on one ocassion, was scratched from a race for showing up two minutes late.

But yesterday, in the fifth at Woodbine, Son Of Paige had all the benevolent stars lined up. Driven confidentally by Mario Baillargeon, Son Of Paige left sharply from post 7 and was soon a very comfy second behind the front runner. Baillargeon kept his horse on the rail until almost the top of the stretch and when the field straightened out, Son Of Paige trotted past the leader and held off a challenge from a late-running Kan Wire to win by almost a length. What was really exciting was the time - 1:54.3 - pretty nifty for the class - a condition race with a purse of $19,000.

Son Of Paige appears to have turned a corner. This is his second win in three races with a solid third in the middle.  Even better, according to an e-mail from Garafalo this morning, my cheque is “in the mail.”

I did notice that the handle for yesterday’s ten race card at Woodbine was a very unimpressive $822,250. Sunday racing is a bitter point in the feud that is on-going between Woodbine and the Ontario Harness Horse Association which represents the harness group. Right now there is no operative contract between the track and horsemen and OHHA is urging its people to boycott the entry box.  So far that boycott has been far from unanimous. There were ten races yesterday with fields ranging from 7 to 10 horses.  Today’s entries indicate 11 races, several of which appear to have 7 or 8 horses each.

So the boycott, if I’m interpreting correctly, seems to be about 20-25% effective; that is races that should have ten horses, have 7 or 8. Generally speaking, if a boycott is 100% effective, then the business finds itself inoperative and eventually has to offer a compromise. If the business is capable of conducting itself in a more or less normal fashion, then the boycott isn’t working.

 As for that handle of $822,250 - Woodbine says anything less than $ million isn’t a feasible day of racing. Yesterday, over $188,000 in purses were offered. The track’s share of $822,250 in bets would be much less than that.

So I ventured down to Woodbine on New Year’s day to try and figure out exactly what was going on between the track and the Ontario Harness Horse Association (OHHA). The two sides had their contract run out at the end of 2009, so anyone racing on January 1st was doing so without an agreement. OHHA was urging its members to boycott the racing, but ten races were run yesterday. Had there been full participation, Woodbine had planned to run a busy card of 13 races, and many of yesterday’s heats had only 7 or 8 horses. So, doing the math, it seems roughly that a third of the horsemen are honouring the boycott. I looked for leading trainers Ben Ballairgeon and Robert Fellows - neither was in attendance. Leading driver Jody Jamieson was absent and I didn’t see Paul MacDonell as well.

On the other hand, veterans Rick Zeron, Mike Saftic, Luc Ouellette, Randy Waples and Sylvain Filion were there.

Actually, I had an interesting meeting inside the track, before I visited the paddock. At the bottom of the escalators leading to the second floor, there was OHHA director John Walzac and officer Brian Tropea. Both had cheshire smiles on their faces after being asked to leave the paddock. Perhaps Woodbine officials were concerned they were rallying the troops.

As for the boycott, it’s hard to call it a  success….looking ahead to January 5th..which would reflect how many horsemen entered horses after January 1st, I see 11 races carded…and a total of 88 horses.

It makes me wonder if there is a significant rift among the horsemen. Will there be festering resentment among those loyal to OHHA against those who showed up to race? Will it become increasingly difficult for drivers and trainers to stay on the side of the boycott while the others keep scooping up the purses?

Woodbine’s latest release on the contract negotiations is worded in a most interesting way.

“Important changes woodbine is seeking include:

 OHHA’s support of the fight against cheaters including support for Woodbine’s duty to provide honest racing by barring or suspending invidiuals who have had a positive test for performance enhancing drugs

and… OHHA permitting existing HPI account wagering customers to continue wagering in the event OHHA boycotts live racing.”

In the first case, OHHA wants to the right to represent and counsel members who have been banned by Woodbine. Personally, I don’t see this as a reason to stop racing. Individuals nailed for drugs at the track always have the option of fighting charges in the traditional manner by hiring a lawyer.

The second case is curious though. It seems to suggest that OHHA can somehow prevent Woodbine from offering wagering on other tracks. Seems like quite the slippery slope. If OHHA were able to prevent Woodbine from offering parimutuel wagering, fans would be distressed and confused - like how can harness horsemen stop me from betting on Aqueduct? And surely this would create all kinds of ill-will with the thoroughbred horsemen, who get a certain share from the satellite wagering.

 I offer no solutions. My racetrack skills start and end with the math necessary to wheel a couple of longshots. It does tell you that horse racing in Ontario still suffers from too many separate groups, each with their own vested interests.