"It was his hobby. He has millions and millions of dollars' worth of horses. It's like having an NFL team with no league to play in," said Wayne Lilley, a Canadian journalist who wrote a biography of Stronach.
As Stronach told California racing officials last year, he brought one of his fillies to the Santa Anita Park near Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, won a few races and fell in love with the place. So when the track went up for sale in 1998, he bought it.
A year later, he picked up a string of other racing properties: Gulfstream Park, near Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Remington Park in Oklahoma; Thistledown in Ohio; Golden Gate Fields in Northern California.
Magna International, which Stronach controls through a super-voting class of stock, paid for the shopping spree - angering public shareholders who wanted new investment to go into the auto-parts business. Under increasing pressure, Stronach spun off Magna Entertainment as a separate company in 2000.
Stronach wanted to transform Magna's major racetracks into Las Vegas-style entertainment centers with shops, restaurants and other attractions. He shelled out millions to refurbish tracks, lobby for slots and create new wagering technology such as the Horse Wizard - the latter by buying into AmTote International Inc., the Hunt Valley-based company that pioneered electronic bet processing systems.
Both Magna and its primary competition, Churchill Downs, the company built around the track that hosts the Kentucky Derby, saw their futures in track consolidation and creating simulcast networks that would create year-round wagering by transmitting live race signals to tracks and other sites.
In 2002, when the Maryland Jockey Club looked to sell Laurel Park and Pimlico, Magna outbid Churchill Downs for a controlling stake. By the next year, Magna owned 14 tracks, almost double Churchill Downs' holdings.
But as timing would have it, revenue from simulcasting peaked around the same time. Live attendance continued to fall. Competition from other forms of gambling grew.
"Everyplace they turned, they bought at the top of the market," said Timothy Capps, a former Maryland Jockey Club official who is now executive-in-residence at the University of Louisville's Equine Industry Program. "Within two to three years, the tracks weren't worth as much as [when] they bought them."
Still, Stronach continued to come up with big plans.
Austria and California
