Finally, peace reigned.
After months of public bickering, the Maryland Jockey Club and the state's thoroughbred horsemen agreed yesterday on a racing schedule through June 2006 and a stakes schedule through March 2004.
The agreement on stakes races eliminates the prestigious Pimlico Special for this year only. Its $600,000 purse will be distributed among non-stakes races for the benefit of Maryland trainers and horse owners who race here day-in and day-out.
"We are bitterly disappointed to cut the Pimlico Special this year," said Joe De Francis, president and CEO of the Maryland Jockey Club. "That was the price of peace. Peace and cooperation [with the horsemen] were more important than this one single race."
Run in May the week before the Preakness, the Pimlico Special is one of only three Grade I stakes that traditionally focus national attention on Maryland racing. The others are the Preakness and Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash.
The Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, which represents trainers and horse owners, insisted on suspending the Pimlico Special as the final major cut necessitated by the loss of the $6.2 million state grant to thoroughbred purses.
Alan Foreman, lawyer for the horsemen's group, said that the "unusual economic circumstances" of losing the purse supplement gave horsemen no alternative but to fight for the one-year hiatus of the Pimlico Special.
"Not the horsemen or the racetracks wanted to do that," Foreman said.
Foreman and De Francis sat side by side as they unveiled their last-minute agreement to the racing commissioners who were assembled in the Ruffian Room at Laurel Park.
"This marks the beginning of what we hope is a new era of cooperation between the two organizations ... to move Maryland racing forward," De Francis said.
Added Foreman: "We're both trying to do what's best for Maryland racing, although we may disagree on how to get there."
The two sides met in recent days to try to iron out an agreement to present to the commission. Details weren't finalized until yesterday morning.
In fact, when Lou Ulman, chairman of the commission, reached that point in the agenda and called the sides forward, they were nowhere to be found. They were still meeting outside the room in private. Ulman skipped ahead to the next item.
When Foreman and De Francis finally appeared, they presented a plan that guarantees 220 days of live racing per year through 2005. At least 25 of those days will be between June 1 and Aug. 31.
