Out on the five-eighths mile oval, track superintendent Brad Clark circled in a tractor pulling a drag, part of a non-stop, 24-hour-a-day effort to keep the racing surface from icing over before tonight’s grand opening.
Artic blast, polar vortex, a Mr. Freeze super-villain script plucked straight out of Batman? Call this over-the-top cold spell what you want, but when race secretary Gregg Keidel looked up from his desk onto the wintry scene outside Thursday morning, he saw nothing but sunny days.
Or, as he described it, “The Renaissance of racing.”
After more than a decade of deep-freeze decline, harness racing in Ohio is in the process of experiencing a remarkable resurgence that will be put on display Friday — when Miami Valley Racing opens with an 11-race card in what will be the first of 66 racing dates between now and early May — and then on Oct. 3 when the Hollywood Gaming at the Dayton Raceway begins its harness competition that will go until late December.
The expansion of legalized gambling in Ohio in 2012 gave birth to the two new racinos in Southwest Ohio, both offering far bigger purses thanks to an infusion of Video Lottery Terminal (VLT) money. And that financial boost is bringing an influx of horses, trainers, breeders and every other component of the racing game from tack shops, vets and blacksmiths to training and stabling facilities and people who provide hay straw and feed.
“For years Ohio was traditionally one of the leading states for harness racing,” said Keidel. “Then about 15 years ago when all the other states around us got racinos and we didn’t, everything started to decline. Some operations folded, others went on to race in Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
“Ohio went from leading the country in the number of foals produced each year — something like 1,800 15 years ago — to just 400 a few years back.
“We were holding the industry together with duct tape and paper clips.
“But about three years ago when it became clear racinos were going to happen in Ohio, you saw the renaissance begin. People follow the money. They started to move their operations back here. We got more stallions, better mares and there were 2,200 foals last year, which is second in the country to only Pennsylvania.
“And in my opinion, in another two years Ohio will regain its rightful place as the No. 1 producer of standardbred horses in the United States.”
Former journalist
Keidel will be the race secretary at both the Miami Valley Raceway west of Lebanon on SR 63 and at Dayton Raceway, which is currently under construction at Needmore and Wagner Ford roads.
For the uninitiated, he said, “I like to compare my job to being a matchmaker in boxing, except I try to match eight or nine horses — instead of just two boxers — into competitive races.”
He not only knows the business (he was once a standardbred owner and driver), but he knows how to get the word out about his sport’s resurgence.
Raised in Aurora in northeastern Ohio, he graduated from the Scripps Howard journalism school at Ohio University and promptly started a chain of six community newspapers in and around his hometown He also launched a magazine about the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Sports Scene, that he ended up selling to Art Modell.
After a decade in the business, he sold his newspaper, bought a couple of harness horses and eventually was training and driving them when Northfield Park outside Cleveland offered a job as publicity director. Two years later he was promoted to director of racing, a job he held for over two decades.
During the 1990s, Northfield became the second-highest handle track in the country, he said: “It was just a magnificent place to be. But then at the turn of the century, racing in Ohio started to go downhill and it was painful to watch.”
Six years ago, while still working at Northfield, he also got a job helping launch the Running Aces Harness Park, just north of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Although he still holds that summertime job, he retired from Northfield three years ago and had been judging races at Pompano Park in Florida.
Then came the offer to handle the racing secretary duties at the Lebanon and Dayton racinos, which are owned by different companies, but because of different racing dates, will help form a year-round harness circuit along with the summer dates at Scioto Downs just south of Columbus.
Dramatic return
The heavy snowfall and unseasonable cold has been a challenge for workers getting the $25 million Miami Valley Raceway ready for tonight’s opening.
Thursday they were finally hoping to be able to pour the concrete pad to put the tote board up in the infield and they have been working on getting more hot water into the 156-stall paddock barn to bathe the horses after racing.
As for the standardbreds themselves, Keidel said, they can race in these temperatures while thoroughbreds cannot.
“They race harness horses in places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo all winter long so I don’t doubt we will be able to do so as well,” he said. “Usually harness races aren’t canceled unless temperatures are about zero or wind chills are minus-15.
“Thoroughbreds can’t run now because they need a much deeper cushion — three to four inches — to race on. And you can’t maintain that in northern states in the winter.
“The other thing is that standardbreds train six days a week, four to five miles a day. They’re much stouter, better conditioned (for this weather). They race once a week while thoroughbreds like to go every 15 to 21 days. Standardbreds are just a sturdier lot.”
And at Miami Valley Raceway they’ll run on a track — built by the renown Chuck Coon and Sons — that at five-eighths of a mile is bigger than the half-mile ovals of the old Lebanon Raceway (now a training facility), Northfield and the famed Little Brown Jug track at the Delaware County Fairgrounds.
Keidel hopes to have 12-race cards for most of Miami Valley’s five nights of racing (6:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday). He said purses will be 2 1/2 times bigger than at Lebanon, ranging from a minimum of $3,000 to $12,500 with $50,000 for the pair of Grand Circuit races that will be run there at the close of the meet on May 4.
Keidel said about 9 percent of the net win from the VLTs goes into purses, and with casino money being stockpiled all year, he expects race payouts to be considerably higher next season.
This weekend the race cards will be preceded by festivities. A dozen local drivers will sign autographs for an hour before tonight’s first race and Saturday and Sunday, the past three national drivers of the year — Dave Palone, Ronnie Wrenn Jr. and Dan Noble, son of the late Chip Noble from Xenia — will sign autographs. Hall of Fame announcer Roger Huston will be on hand as well and will call some races.
“This is the start of a dramatic return and it’s going to be exciting to watch,” Keidel said. “The sport slipped dramatically over 15 years, but it’s not going to take 15 years to get back to where it was.
“It’s going to happen quickly. Almost overnight you could say. Racing here is going to be hot again.”
Thursday, in the midst of the snowy deep freeze, you already could feel that heat.
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