Allen Gutterman sat in his Fort Lee, N.J., apartment one night last week, working on a severance package that he's preparing for the New York Racing Association.
"First time I've been fired," said Gutterman, NYRA's high-profile vice president of marketing and public relations, whose job was terminated 10 days ago by Kenny Noe, the association's new president.
Last Thursday, longtime Maryland trainer Greg Wilson, who saddled stakes winner after stakes winner at Laurel and Pimlico during the 1980s, loaded the remnants of his modest stable and hitched a ride to Florida with trainer John Salzman's string.
It was the first time, other than to head to his home state of Delaware, that Wilson had left Maryland in 20 years.
On Friday, Jim Casey, a leading West Virginia owner-breeder-trainer, stood in the Laurel grandstand, talking about how he'll divide his stable when the Charles Town racetrack shuts down for an undetermined length of time next week.
bTC "I'll send a few more horses to my son at Laurel," Casey said. "Probably a half-dozen up to Garden State Park with David Walters [another exiting West Virginia trainer], a few out to Mountaineer Park, and take the others home. I'll sit tight and see if Charles Town reopens in the spring."
In the past few weeks, hundreds of lives at New York, Maryland and West Virginia racing centers have been altered by the latest upheavals in the industry.
Local attorney Alan Foreman, a Joe Hirsch fellow at the University of Arizona Symposium on Racing, describes it as "a normal shake-out that everyone is experiencing in some shape or form" as the industry downsizes.
In each instance, there are specific reasons for the uprooting of careers and lives, all linked to one inescapable conclusion -- the game is shrinking.
In New York, track publicist Glen Mathes said the departure of Gutterman, along with several other longtime employees who are retiring and won't be replaced, is part of "a definite restructuring" since Noe took over a month ago.
"NYRA is not in great financial shape," Mathes said. "I don't know the exact figures to this date for 1994, but last winter we lost $15 million."
In New York there are legal impediments to the tracks instituting multi-card simulcasting, which has helped Maryland tracks reverse a tide of red ink. Racing there also competes with a
separate off-track betting corporation, causing continual turmoil for the entire industry.
In Maryland, Wilson's departure, and the future of the industry, hinges to a large degree on a shortage of horses and owners.
Not enough animals will be stabled at the Maryland tracks this winter to make it economically feasible to keep three one-mile tracks open for training.
The Pimlico stable area and oval shut down for three months beginning last week, meaning several hundred horses and people have been shifted, short-term, to vacancies at Laurel Park and the Bowie Training Center. Wilson, whose down-scaled stable was asked to leave Laurel for Bowie, didn't want to go, so he decided he might as well try something new and shipped to Florida.
Laurel/Pimlico management is holding a series of educational dinner meetings to try to gain support for the creation of a joint Maryland-Virginia racing circuit.
Because of the shortage of horses, the Virginia Racing Commission recently awarded the license to build the state's first track to Arnold Stansley, a promoter who promised the board he'll join forces with the Maryland tracks.
That will mean more restructuring because live racing will shut down for four months each year in Maryland and state horsemen will have to ship their animals elsewhere, either to the proposed Richmond track or other East Coast ovals.
L In West Virginia, there is the prospect of no racing at all.
Paul Espinosa, spokesman for the Charles Town Races, said "there have been one or two inquiries" since management announced a month ago it would shut down in 1995. Partly because of competition from Maryland's OTB parlor in nearby Frederick County, the West Virginia track will lose about $1.3 million in 1994. Efforts to install slot machines to create a new gambling outlet at Charles Town were rebuffed by local voters in a Nov. 8 referendum.
Former Washington Redskins linebacker Sam Huff, director of the West Virginia Breeders' Classic, has proposed putting together a group of investors to buy the track. So has the city of Ransom, which borders the track. "But I don't know how serious they are," Espinosa said. "I don't think there's much reason for optimism."
Smashing day at the races
An 82-year-old great-grandfather from Columbia came to Laurel Park last Tuesday to bet Slew's Eagle in the eighth race. He left by soaring through a wall near the track's grandstand.
Frank Conley, a retired aircraft technician, said he had just gotten into his pickup truck to drive home when the vehicle careened out of control, smashed into four other cars, jumped a foot-high brick embankment and crashed through the wall of a maintenance shed at the entrance to the grandstand.
At one point, a track security guard said the vehicle was "actually airborne."
Conley said a valet attendant in the Sports Palace parking lot had left the truck in "park. . . . as soon as I climbed in, even before I had a chance to put on my seat belt, the wheels squealed and the truck took off."
Conley said he grabbed the steering wheel to guide the vehicle away from fans who were leaving the track. He headed for the grandstand wall, hitting two Lincolns, a Lexus and a Toyota before coming to rest inside the maintenance shed.
"Better to hit cars than people," Conley said.
The impact shattered the windshield and demolished the front of the truck, "which is actually owned by my son-in-law," Conley said.
Conley, however, was not injured and was not charged by police.
Young jockey, old mounts
When apprentice Eric Payne rode a pair of winners at Laurel last Tuesday, the victories came aboard experienced old geldings.
Payne, 22, recently arrived at Laurel from Louisville, Ky. He won the first race with 8-year-old Star Major and the fourth race with 7-year-old Ebonizer. Although both horses are getting a bit long in the tooth, each one, having exhibited class in his younger days, is still capable of hitting the finish line first, especially with a seven-pound weight break from Payne.
Collectively, the two equine old-timers have made 91 starts and won 25 races.
Payne rides with an apprentice allowance until next October. His agent is John Betts.
Laurel hires Phoebe Hayes
New York horsewoman Phoebe Hayes, who has made her mark by producing horse fairs at Belmont and Laurel Parks, has been hired by Maryland Jockey Club management as its new director of corporate and group sales.
Hayes replaces Lois Ryan, who is assisting track co-owner Karin De Francis in her newly created hospitality department. Hayes' two full-time Laurel assistants are Kelly James and Judy Miller, mother of jockey Donnie Miller Jr.
In addition to her experience in the marketing departments at the New York and Maryland tracks, Hayes has also galloped horses for trainer Mack Miller and handled yearlings at the major summer auctions, including the Keeneland July sales.