For a horse racing outsider, Frank Stronach has spent a long time inside the sport.

The 69-year-old Canadian billionaire, whose Magna Entertainment Corp. announced yesterday plans to acquire Maryland's major thoroughbred racetracks, bought his first horse in 1961 for $700.

Today, he commands an equine empire with hundreds of horses on farms in Kentucky, Florida and Ontario and a chain of racetracks - 11 thoroughbred tracks bought or leased since 1998 - that collectively account for more than one out of every four dollars bet on thoroughbreds in this country. He has won just about every major award in the business, and some of its biggest races, including the Preakness.

So why are the lords of racing, who ordinarily fawn over success and money, so wary of him?

Because he can barely stand them. Time and time again, Stronach, who founded a tool-and-die shop and built it into an $11 billion-a-year transnational behemoth, has railed against the old-money elites who run racing.

"They are nice people and honest people, but collectively they have done a lousy job. The club just doesn't work. It never did," Stronach said in a stinging, 1997 critique of the nonprofit Ontario Jockey Club, on whose board he had served for two years.

"They screwed up a mono- poly," Stronach told the Toronto Sun.

The club, operator of Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, tossed Stronach off its board in a huff. "If Frank attended more board meetings and did less talking and more listening, he would be up to speed," jockey club executive David Willmot told the newspaper.

But Stronach was just warming up. A few years later, just as the industry began to unite behind the fledgling National Thoroughbred Racing Association, he led a mutiny of 22 racetracks out of the group. He said the association's structure - its board members appointed themselves - was better suited to a country club than a trade group and its collectivist strategies would stunt competition.

Again, the industry responded angrily. John Gaines, creator of the Breeders' Cup race series, publicly compared Stronach to Ross Perot, saying they both were "fascinated with power" and "utterly, absolutely convinced of their rightness."

Days later, Ed Friendly, founder of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, took out a full-page ad in the Daily Racing Form to say Stronach's "greed and zest for power outweighs what is good for racing."

"Your egomaniacal attitude is disruptive to the well-being of the industry," Friendly wrote. "You are hell-bent on controlling racing and are trying to destroy anything that stands in your way."

Stronach brushed off the barbs and said it was time for racing to enter the modern era of accountability to stakeholders and service to customers.

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, faced with a major loss of its membership, relented. The NTRA board is now elected, and the group issued a statement vowing its "commitment to free enterprise." The breakaway tracks, which included Maryland's, rejoined. But it remains an uneasy detente.

The association and Stronach still disagree on key matters - chiefly the group's support for a cable television channel, TVG, that will compete with a satellite operation Magna is planning. But Magna and the NTRA are "working pretty well together," said NTRA executive director Tim Smith.

"What is undeniable is the scope of his investment" in racing, Smith said.

Outspoken, yet private

Acquaintances describe Stronach as restless and autocratic, but entertaining. A tall man with a thick Austrian accent and white hair, he has strong opinions about most every topic, from politics to pedigrees.

"All of us would hope to have the energy level at his age," said Smith, of the NTRA.

Terrence Collier, the director of marketing for Fasig-Tipton Co., a Lexington, Ky.-based horse auctioneer, has known Stronach for more than 30 years.

"Frank truly hasn't changed very much. He was pretty charismatic. You always sensed there was something different about him. He was always a big- picture guy," Collier said.

"He is a very decisive guy, clear-cut, clear-thinking guy. He listens to his team and gets their input. Then he makes his own decisions and goes with that. He is quite autocratic, and that is one of his strengths," Collier said.

"I know there has been a lot of criticism because he has not gone along with the racing establishment. I don't think it's necessary for all of us to agree with everything he is doing. He is trying to get from A to Z. He is committed to his vision."

Stronach still has a home - actually, a castle - in his native Austria, where he was born in the foothills of the Alps. He considers Switzerland his primary residence, but also has houses in Canada, Florida, Colorado and Kentucky. He permits little to be said in public about his wife, Elfreide, with whom he immigrated to Canada. She is universally described as beautiful and pops up at charity events in Toronto, such as the couple's famous annual hoedowns. The party draws thousands of socialites dressed in cowboy hats and string ties and raises money for charity.

"He is very private," said Magna spokeswoman Sue Floyd. Stronach declined an interview for this article.

On fast buying track

In racing, Stronach has adopted a strategy of "if you can't join them, beat them." Since buying the scenic Santa Anita Race Track outside Los Angeles for $126 million in 1998, Stronach has spent more than $500 million to buy or lease 11 thoroughbred tracks, two harness tracks and one dog track, spread across eight states. He struck a deal last year to pay up to $260 million for New York City's off-track-betting business, but it was shelved after the state legislature failed to approve the transaction.

Like rival Churchill Downs, Magna is betting that, over time, more and more fans will play the ponies over the Internet or through interactive television. Already, 85 percent of wagering in the sport is by fans at tracks or off-track parlors watching a race running somewhere else via closed-circuit television and betting in "co-mingled" pari-mutuel pools.

If this segment of the business continues to flourish, the companies that own the most tracks will benefit, either by selling their race telecasts and keeping a few pennies of every dollar bet or by reaching the bettor directly with TV, telephone and computer networks. Those latter methods - known as "account wagering" because customers bet money they have previously deposited in holding accounts - now represent only 5 percent of the $18 billion pari-mutuel wagering industry, according to Wall Street investment banker Bear, Stearns & Co.

But the potential for growth is "staggering," the firm said in a report issued in January. Horse racing is the only form of Internet gambling permitted on U.S. soil.

Moreover, Magna and Churchill Downs have also pledged their considerable resources - they are publicly traded firms with access to billions of dollars - to update tracks and attract a new generation of fans in ways the "clubs" and private companies that traditionally owned tracks never could. Magna has taken the strategy the furthest, announcing grandiose plans to convert racetracks into multi-purpose "entertainment complexes" with shops and theme-park rides.

"I have a concern that live racing is deteriorating. At every racetrack I go to, it's just old people, no young people," Stronach told the Los Angeles Daily News after he bought Santa Anita.

So far, most of Magna's renovation plans remain just that: plans. When Stronach bought Santa Anita, he unveiled drawings for a "village" of restaurants and stores, a second turf course, luxury suites, museum, theme park, a hotel and condos.

Edward Halpern, executive director of the California Thoroughbred Trainers, said a new restaurant has been built and the grandstand renovated - at a cost of $45 million, according to Magna - but other elements remain on the drawing board.

Halpern said the trainers are still hopeful the full rehabilitation will be completed. "We would like to see it," he said.

"So far, he [Stronach] is very interested and very concerned and loves the sport and he's willing to put his money where his mouth is. Whether he follows through is another matter," Halpern said.

But supporters say it is too soon to judge the impact of Magna's strategies because it is still buying tracks. Look at Magna's larger business record, they say.

It's an impressive one.

Stronach left Austria in 1954, and a few years later started a tool-and-die shop in a Toronto garage. The shop soon landed a contract to make sun-visor brackets for General Motors.

The business, now known as Magna International Inc., grew rapidly, rising along with a trend among automakers to pay others to make some of their parts. Among Magna's current products: the seats used in the Chrysler Town & Country minivan, the front grill of the Toyota Camry and the instrument panel of the Cadillac CTS.

Magna stumbled in the 1980s when Stronach reportedly became distracted by other pursuits, such as a failed run for the Canadian parliament in 1988 and a failed magazine venture. The company, which had borrowed heavily to expand, was more than a billion dollars in debt, was trading at $2 a share and was a good bet for bankruptcy.

But Stronach re-engaged, pared its debt, fired thousands of workers and closed the executive dining room. Last year, Magna posted a profit of $580 million on record sales of $11 billion. It now has 64,000 employees in 19 countries. To assuage shareholders, its track operations were spun off in 2000 to a subsidiary with its own stock, Magna Entertainment, which posted a $23 million operating profit last year.

Sharing the wealth

Despite publicly extolling advancement by merit, Stronach has leavened his company's top ranks with family members. His daughter, Belinda, last year was named president of Magna International, the massive auto parts company, at age 34. She replaced her ex-husband, who was bumped to the head of a subsidiary. The elder Stronach's son, Andrew, is an executive vice president with the horse racing unit, which has grown rapidly.

In accordance with Stronach's philosophy of "fair enterprise" and his corporate constitution - dubbed the "Magna Carta" - Magna International shares its wealth. Employees get 10 percent of the pre-tax profit in the form of cash and shares of company stock, something that has helped Stronach keep unions out of most of his plants. Stockholders get, on average, 20 percent of the annual net profit as dividends.

Executives are richly compensated, getting up to 6 percent of the pre-tax profit each year based on performance. In the case of Stronach, it has made him the most highly paid executive in Canada several times. Last year, he received $33.2 million in salary and "consulting contracts" from the company, as well as a few million dollars worth of stock options.

This is all consistent with his philosophy, laid out in a 1997 article he wrote for the Journal of Canada: "I believe that individuals everywhere have two basic desires: first they want to have personal freedom, which in essence means they want the right to choose their own road to happiness; and second, they want economic freedom, which means they want to be financially independent."