Terry Saxon, a member of the Maryland Racing Commission, says if he were a betting man, he would have wagered early last week that the hearing on Magna Entertainment Corp.'s majority purchase of the Maryland Jockey Club would have been postponed.
Why? Because of a scathing report from the commission about deplorable conditions on the backstretch at Pimlico, Laurel Park and the Bowie Training Center.
Representatives of the commission toured the stables Sept. 9 and 10 and described conditions as "totally unacceptable." The report said that housing for backstretch workers is "akin to Third World conditions," that most barns at Laurel are "dilapidated, rotted, dirty and not at all conducive to human or equine function or health" and that rats at Pimlico are bigger than the cats supposedly there to control the rodent population.
The report detailed problems with drainage, paving, grading, manure disposal, lack of space for grazing, leaky barn roofs, pigeons, dust and, especially, conditions for workers who live in dorms, free of charge, supplied by the racetrack.
"These conditions show a serious disregard for the health and welfare of the backstretch workers," the report read. "The degree of neglect is so high and ongoing ... that in most cases renovation is out of the question."
The commissioners considered confronting the Maryland Jockey Club with the report back in the summer. But after the MJC entered into a sales agreement in July with Magna Entertainment Corp., the commissioners decide to wait so they could deal with Magna.
Saxon said the commissioners made it clear to Magna officials that unless they guaranteed backstretch improvements, the commissioners would postpone the Wednesday hearing.
"We were going to accept nothing less," Saxon said. "Over the weekend and all day Monday and Tuesday, we were in negotiations with them. We were actually still negotiating the final document [Wednesday] as people waited out in the hall [at Laurel Park] for our meeting to begin."
Commissioners needed only one hour to approve unanimously Magna's majority purchase of the Maryland Jockey Club.
Saxon said "all that unity and goodwill didn't happen by accident." He credited the diligence of the racing commission and the professionalism of the Magna team.
"The more we found out about them, the more comfortable we were with them," Saxon said. "They felt at first that their word was more than enough.
"After our problems in the past with Joe [De Francis, president and Maryland Jockey Club chief executive] and his grandiose schemes that didn't produce anything, we were going to need some kind of guarantee. I just didn't want to see another dog and pony show."
Ed Hannah, executive vice president and general counsel of Magna Entertainment Corp., and Jim McAlpine, president and CEO of Magna, worked with commissioners to fashion a document guaranteeing the expenditure of $15 million for backstretch upgrades - $5 million to be spent by Aug. 31, 2003, another $5 million by Dec. 31, 2003, and another $5 million by June 30, 2004.
Magna also pledged an additional $15 million - for a total of $30 million - to be spent for track improvements over the next three years. McAlpine said guaranteeing the expenditure "wasn't very important, because we would have wound up doing it anyway. But for the racing commission, it was very important."
Saxon said that he and other commissioners left the meeting encouraged that future dealings with Magna will be as direct and fruitful. He said he is "very optimistic" about the future of Maryland racing.
No early cutoff for Laurel
Lou Raffetto Jr., chief operating officer of the Maryland Jockey Club, says that Laurel Park will not follow the lead of other tracks that, in the wake of the Pick Six betting scandal, have set early cutoff times for accepting bets and even banned multi-horse wagers.
"We feel that's an overreaction to the situation," Raffetto said.
He said he has discussed the situation with officials at AmTote International, the Hunt Valley totalizator company that handles bets for the Maryland Jockey Club. In a letter to Raffetto, John C. Corckran Jr., president of AmTote, wrote that AmTote's security system leads the industry and that the security breech that caused the Pick Six scandal could not have happened on AmTote's system.
"We feel our system's secure," Raffetto said. "We don't plan on doing anything differently."
Around the tracks
Nancy Alberts, trainer, owner and breeder of Magic Weisner, has sent her Preakness runner-up to the farm where he can continue his recovery from the West Nile virus. Alberts vanned Magic Weisner last weekend to her friend John Salzman's farm in Carroll County.
Alberts, who calls her 3-year-old gelding Magic, said he had regained enough strength in his hind end that she felt comfortable with his spending all day with another horse in a field. Now, she said, he must build up his strength before returning to the track.
She still expects him to race again but that "this isn't something you can expect to happen overnight. ... I just feel so bad about this happening to Magic, because he's such a good kid."
The prestigious Colonial Cup, the final Grade I steeplechase race of the year, takes place today in Camden, S.C. All Gong, Flat Top, It's A Giggle and the Maryland-based Tres Touche could perhaps win an Eclipse Award with a victory in the 2 3/4 -mile race over 17 fences.