How slots saved Argentina racing - or not

[Ron Tiller]

Interesting article by Andy Beyer on his excursion into betting in Argentina:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002717.html

Ron Tiller
HDW

[njcurveball]

Great article Ron!

The most surprising part I found was


He has a wife! :eek::eek:

[Gambler]

Thanks for the article Ron

[DanG]

Follow up on Beyer’s international tour of race tracks….

[Article property of the Washington Post and link provided by Quidaily.com]

An Improbable Place to Find A Horse to Conquer the World

By Andrew Beyer

MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY When Scott Wells got his first look at Maronas Racecourse, he was shocked. "It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie," he said. "Everything was covered in vines. Packs of wild dogs were running all over the place."

Wells had come from Lone Star Park near Dallas to supervise the rebuilding of the track and the resuscitation of the thoroughbred sport in Uruguay. Maronas had been one of the grandest tracks in the Americas before it sank into decrepitude. The once-thriving sport had become so pathetic that races were being run without purse money before the track shut down.

Maronas's reopening in 2003 was a remarkable turnaround. So, too, was its transformation into a modern and progressive operation modeled after U.S. racetracks. But even the local people who love horse racing, who never gave up on the sport in its darkest moments, could never have dreamed that a track on the edge of a Montevideo slum would produce the best horse in the world -- the 2006 U.S. horse of the year, Invasor.

In the years that Maronas had thrived, the Jockey Club, which operated it, became rich and powerful. It grew into a bloated bureaucracy with some 700 employees, it spent money lavishly on entertainment and travel for members, and it borrowed heavily to finance improvements to the track. When a financial crisis hit the country in 1981 and the peso was devalued, the Jockey Club couldn't repay its dollar-denominated debts and went broke. Although Maronas had no money for purses, owners continued to race horses and pay for their upkeep, and breeders continued to produce thoroughbreds -- a contradiction of all economic logic.

"Even after Maronas closed, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel, the biggest breeders continued to import expensive stallions," said Ariel Gianola, president of the Uruguayan Stud Book, which oversees the breeding industry. "The reason is that we are the greatest racing fans in the world."

Luis Costa Baleta, director of the Stud Book, offered an alternate explanation: "You might say we were crazy."

When Maronas shut down in 1997, its major creditor wanted to use the property for real estate development. But the ardent racing fans in Uruguay happened to include the president and other important politicians, and they viewed the sport as an institution that needed to be saved. Their plan to do so offered the enticement of a license for slot-machine casinos to a bidder who would rebuild the track. With the Jockey Club's mismanagement in mind, the government stipulated that the owner of the track would have to hire a consultant from outside Uruguay to oversee the development of a new Maronas.

A partnership of Spanish and Argentine investors won the right to develop the track and operate the slots (the losing bidder was the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon), and it chose Lone Star Park as its consultant.

The rebuilding of Maronas preserved the grandeur of the 19th-century architecture while turning the track into a modern and efficient racing facility. Wells insisted on a first-class racing surface that was up to U.S. standards. He modernized Maronas's past-performance data and gave horseplayers better information than their Argentine counterparts receive. He demanded that racing telecasts be high quality.

In contrast to Argentina, which has resisted the most important development in modern racing, Maronas embraced simulcasting. It beams its races to the United States, and it gives its fans the chance to bet on U.S. races. "A lot of the bettors here think simulcasting is a blessing of God," said Alejandro Valdez Diaz, Maronas's general manager. Nothing could underscore the international nature of the modern game more than the sight of a roomful of Uruguayan horseplayers watching a race from Mountaineer Park in West Virginia.

Despite its progress, Maronas remains in a poor country with a small population, and it will always be a modest operation by world racing standards. Its twice-a-week racing cards generate only about $200,000 a day in wagering, less than all but the lowliest U.S. tracks. Even with the aid of slot-machine revenue, Maronas offers only $6,000 for the purse of a maiden race. It was an improbable place to find a horse who would conquer the world.

Two brothers and a third partner had bought Invasor at a farm in Argentina for $20,000 and turned him over to Anibal San Mart¿n, a trainer at Maronas with a moderate record of success. At every racetrack on earth, a trainer with a promising 2-year-old is allowed to dream that the animal will be something special, and San Martin was no different: "Before his first start," he said through an interpreter, "we were absolutely convinced that Invasor was a top horse."

But a top horse by what standards? Even after Invasor had won five straight races at Maronas, including a sweep of the Uruguayan Triple Crown, there was no frame of reference to indicate how the colt might fare on the world stage.

But when Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum made the owners an offer for Invasor that they couldn't refuse -- $1.5 million -- the horse got the chance to prove himself and, of course, the rest is history. Invasor won three straight Grade I stakes in the United States before finishing his 2006 campaign with a victory in the Breeders' Cup Classic; then he won the world's richest race, the Dubai World Cup, before an injury ended his career. His success was a just reward for the many people in his native country who love the sport and had watched it decline almost to extinction. For them, Invasor's greatest achievement was to put Uruguay back on the racing map.

[DanG]

Beyer continues his South American tour…

[Article property of the Washington Post]

Argentina Should Hang On To Its Breeding Tradition

By Andrew Beyer

SAN ANTONIO DE ARECO, Argentina A visitor to Haras De La Pomme, one of the top thoroughbred breeding operations in Argentina, might feel slightly disoriented as he watches some of the farm's yearlings walk by.

Here is a colt by Thunder Gulch, winner of the 1995 Kentucky Derby. Here is a son of Honour and Glory, who won the prestigious Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park. Here is a filly by the late Hennessy, winner of Saratoga's Hopeful Stakes and a top international sire. Here is another youngster by Thunder Gulch. And another. And another. Are we really in the heart of Argentina's horse country, 70 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, or are we in Kentucky?

"You are seeing the globalization of the horse business," said Oscar Calvete, manager of the farm owned by Samuel and Guillermo Liberman, a father and son with far-flung business interests and the passion for horses that is common in this country.

Argentina has a long and rich horse tradition, but in recent years the country's top breeders agreed that they had to scrap part of the tradition to become successful players in the global market. Their decisions, combined with some well-timed good fortune, have created a strong worldwide demand for Argentine thoroughbreds.

People in the United States might wonder why Argentina would want to change a thing. Over the years, Argentine horses have distinguished themselves when they have been exported to the Northern Hemisphere. Bayakoa won the Breeders' Cup Distaff and was named the champion female racehorse of both 1989 and 1990. Paseana was named champion female in 1992 and 1993. Paseana duplicated her feat in 1992 and 1993. Candy Ride delivered one of the best single performances of the last decade when he won the 2003 Pacific Classic, running 1 1/4 miles in 1:59.1. And, of course, in 2006, the Argentine-bred Invasor won the Breeders' Cup Classic and the U.S. horse of the year title.

The roots of this success go back more than a century, when a prosperous Argentina imported high-quality thoroughbred stock from Europe. The breeders here were never interested in producing fancy pedigrees, however; they wanted horses with stamina, good conformation and toughness. Trainer Ron McAnally, who brought Bayakoa, Paseana and Candy Ride to the United States, said, "I believe the Argentine horses are more durable, and they stay sound longer."

But horse buyers around the globe today are more interested in speed and precocity than they are in stamina and durability. They seek these qualities by buying the offspring of recognized stallions whose genes promise speed. Argentina's breeding industry was out of step with the world.

A few years ago, Northern Hemisphere stallions began to cross the Equator to stand at stud during Argentina's breeding season, and the leaders of the horse industry saw that this was the wave of the future. Two years ago, Haras De La Pomme and three other big farms joined forces to import high-class stallions and to create a new facility, La Mission, where they would be bred to local mares. Nicolas Quintana, general manager of La Mission, said, "Everyone wanted to try to put Argentina into the international marketplace." Now the sons and daughters of quick horses such as Hennessy and Honour and Glory were supplanting the offspring of obscure, stamina-oriented Argentina stallions.

As these developments were unfolding, Invasor provided worldwide advertising for the country's breeding industry. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai had bought the colt after his sweep of Uruguay's Triple Crown, and horse owners from around the world were trying to emulate his success. Invasor himself possessed a typically unglamorous Argentine pedigree -- his sire Candy Stripes had been a failure in the United States -- but now buyers were now getting the chance to purchase the offspring of North American stallions and Argentine mares.

Most of the buyers were Arabs. Facundo Bunge, president of La Pomme, observed that they initially were looking for solid, established racehorses, but then started speculating on youngsters who had won only a race or two. La Pomme owned a 2-year-old filly named Love Dancing (a daughter of the North American stallion Salt Lake) who had earned about $20,000 after winning her first two starts, including a Grade III stakes. The farm wasn't eager to sell, but did when Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum made an offer it couldn't refuse: $1 million. Such lavish offers have been commonplace. McAnally, who bought so many good Argentine horses in the past, lamented that he has been priced out of the market. "The Arabs are regularly paying two and three times what the horses are worth," he said. "Invasor is going to keep them coming back."

These are heady days for a racing industry that used to feel that the rest of the world was ignoring it. But based on the U.S. experience, Argentina should view with some caution the changes it is making to its industry.

Like any other businessmen, horse owners have to heed the desires of their customers. But when breeders put too much of an emphasis on speed, precocity and pedigree fashion, and they no longer strive to produce horses who are sound and well conformed, their product suffers in the long run. This has happened over the last 30 years in the United States, where the average racehorse now makes only 6.3 starts per year and the careers of many good horses end before they complete their 3-year-old season. Argentina needs to be part of the modern horse industry, but it shouldn't reject altogether the principles that let it produce Bayakoa, Paseana and Invasor.