May 18, 2005|By John Eisenberg
PREAKNESS VISITORS must be surprised to hear the race's very future here is being debated. It's a local institution that dates to 1873, and it's never been bigger or better. Almost 125,000 spectators saw it last year.
The second jewel of the Triple Crown couldn't possibly be moved, could it?
Yes, it could.
Those who dismiss the threat, claiming it is strictly a politically motivated pose, don't understand two basic commandments of modern sports - that money rules all and tradition is always for sale.
Magna Entertainment Corp., which owns Pimlico and Laurel and controls the Preakness, is a Canadian firm with no emotional or historical attachment to Maryland racing. It wants to make money and bought the tracks to make money, but as long as slots remain tied up in a political brouhaha, it's going to lose money here.
That, folks, is a dangerous set of circumstances.
The Preakness keeps things going here, paying for the other 364 days of racing business, which are an increasing financial drain without slots. But Magna is only going to tolerate the arrangement for so long, having reportedly lost more than $200 million in the past three years.
Why move the Preakness? A better question is: Why wouldn't Magna move it?
If slots aren't coming, Maryland is a break-even racing state at best and stuck in a no-win situation with slots at tracks in neighboring states.
"The outlook is very dim" without slots, said Tim Ritchey, trainer of Afleet Alex, one of Saturday's Preakness favorites.
Ritchey used to race here, still lives in Elkton and exuded passion for Maryland racing yesterday, but he long ago took his horses to Delaware and Pennsylvania.
"I can't imagine major stables staying around as long as slots are elsewhere and not here," he said. "It's just business. You have to go where you can win more money."
If Magna ever decides Maryland is just a lost cause - and its recent pledge to stop investing in the tracks is ominous - nothing can stop the firm from moving the Preakness.
Alleged impediments built into the state bylaws would punish any track owner who moved the Preakness with higher taxes and other restrictions, but that wouldn't stop Magna if it just up and left the state.
Another alleged impediment - giving the state the right to match any sale of the race - also is no factor, because Magna wouldn't sell the Preakness; it would just move it to another of the many tracks it owns, such as Gulfstream Park, a South Florida facility undergoing an expensive renovation and set to open in 2006 as a showcase.
Why move the Preakness? Why wouldn't Magna move it when it has glittering alternatives elsewhere while racing goes nowhere here?
The only reason to think it might not happen is Magna paid $117 million for Laurel and Pimlico in 2002, and moving the Preakness would mean shuttering its business here and giving up on that investment. That makes no sense.
But here's guessing the boys and girls in accounting could write down the loss, shift some numbers and make it viable in about two minutes.
If Magna wants to move the Preakness, it can.
Racing is caught in the middle of a political standoff here, with each side seemingly now intent mostly on blaming the other. Guess what? They all deserve blame. Either they don't care enough about racing or they aren't deft enough at compromising. They'll all have blood on their hands if Magna moves the Preakness.
Magna chairman Frank Stronach is a racing aficionado who surely doesn't want to move it. But while his firm should be criticized for going back on its original pledge to invest in Pimlico and Laurel with or without slots, Maryland is basically killing itself.
"You can't expect [Magna] to keep putting money into the tracks if nothing positive is happening," Ritchey said.
The slots debate is political in nature, but the future of the Preakness is a sports story. And the value of tradition in sports today is, frankly, nil. Everything is for sale at the right price, including the bases at major league parks. (Remember the Spider-Man II debacle?)
People who think the Preakness won't move should talk to someone in Indianapolis, where the 500 is not nearly the landmark it was, a victim of a debilitating civil war between rival auto racing factions.
People who think the Preakness won't move should talk to someone in Dallas, where the Cotton Bowl is now a minor college football bowl instead of a premier event because of shifting political winds.
Slots opponents who think the Preakness won't move should get their heads out of the sand and realize that anything is possible in sports today, that history and tradition are worth as much as a torn mutuel ticket and that those warning sirens going off are real.
