FARMINGTON – As the sports world continues to recover from the effects of shutting down much of 2020, some familiarity comes with it.
The sound of the fans at baseball games, the sounds of the electricity humming through an arena.
At SunRay Park and Casino this week, the familiar sounds of the tractor churning up the dirt on the track has returned. The sounds of the horses working out in preparation for their next race is a welcoming sign.
The business and economics of sports – the stuff most fans don’t see – are wading deep in recovery mode, and the sport of horse racing in New Mexico is starting to face those challenges as opening day of the 2021 live racing season approaches.
The racetrack at SunRay Park and Casino, located between Farmington and Bloomfield in San Juan County, has not had a race run at their facility since June 2, 2019.
The track is scheduled to open its 2021 racing season on April 23. By the time the first race loads into the starting gate, it will come at the end of a 691-day gap between live races at the historic racetrack.
Last year’s racing season, which was scheduled to begin in April of 2020, was shut down completely because of COVID-19 restrictions. It’s estimated nearly $150,000 per day was lost to horsemen doing business in the Four Corners. Over the course of a six-week season, those totals get much higher and the impact on horsemen much greater.
“The small town horsemen took the worst of it all,” said New Mexico Racing Commission member John Buffington. “It’s harder for the local horsemen to just pack and move their operation out of the state, especially when there’s no revenue coming in.”
SunRay Park was looking forward to a successful 2020 racing season. Coming off a strong 2019 which saw increases in both on-track and simulcast handle, the outlook was bright for the next year.
“We had so much optimism coming out of the 2019 season,” said Steve Fedunak, simulcast operations manager for SunRay. “We were looking at 2020 for being such a big meet for us. It’s just been devastating.”
A large portion of racing’s purse money in New Mexico comes from casinos which also operate racetracks. With the shutdowns that plagued much of the state, it created a ripple effect which has found many horsemen attempting to do business elsewhere.
Justin Evans, who has been the leading thoroughbred trainer at SunRay Park for nearly each of the past eight seasons, has moved his entire operation to neighboring Arizona, where he is currently atop the standings at Turf Paradise in Phoenix.
Todd Fincher moved his barn to Texas. He has been one of the leading trainers in the state for several years.
Those barns had achieved notoriety and success in recent years, making the move difficult but not impossible.
The same cannot be said for the smaller outfits – owners, trainers and grooms – which relied on tracks such as SunRay Park and nearby Albuquerque Downs for their survival.
“It’s been tough on everyone,” Buffington said. “Horses are laid off from racing, but those horses need care. There’s no way for these operations to recover when the funds are all off the table.”
Horsemen spend much of their time traveling between racetracks, counties and states in order to do business. The closure of SunRay was only the beginning of a rough year.
“The worst part of all of this has been dealing with the uncertainty of everything,” said to SunRay Park general manager Brad Boehm. “Trying to manage the uncertainties of all the things that could happen.”
Boehm remembers the day he learned of the shutdown, which at the time he thought might only last a few weeks and, at worst, would just push back the 2020 opening day a few weeks.
“March 14 was when we got the call from (New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham),” Boehm recalled. “At that time, the talk was if we’d be closed for two to three weeks.”
That timeframe was quickly turned into months, and soon it became impossible to hold a racing season, which began the downward turn for racing in the region and perhaps across the state, according to Fedunak.
“The worst part is that racing in New Mexico has been forgotten, certainly we’ve been forgotten,” Fedunak said. “Racetracks across the country that used to simulcast our product have now gotten used to making those decisions for simulcasts without New Mexico there.”
The Downs at Albuquerque, Ruidoso Downs and Zia Park did hold truncated racing seasons in 2020, albeit with little to no fans in attendance. Since much of the handle from racing comes from patrons on track at racinos (casinos with adjoining race tracks), it was difficult for them to show any profit.
Sunland Park, arguably the most successful of all the racinos within the state, saw its 2019-20 racing season shut down days before the richest thoroughbred race of their season, the $700,000 Sunland Derby. Its entire 2020-21 campaign, which normally starts at the end of December and runs through mid-April; was formally canceled last fall.
The money that was to be used for purses at Sunland was distributed to other racinos within the state to help fund the upcoming season at SunRay, as well as Albuquerque Downs, Ruidoso and Zia Park. The monies will go a long way, but not quite long enough to be comparable for what would have been an otherwise normal racing season.
“Purses are estimated to be vastly different this season, particularly with stakes races,” said Boehm. “But with an emphasis on New Mexico-bred money incentives in the purses, some of that added money will go back to the horsemen.”
Seven of the 10 stakes races which will be held at SunRay this season will be held for registered New Mexico-bred quarter horses and thoroughbreds, which will allow that money to be distributed primarily for horsemen doing most of their business within the state.
But even that may not be enough for what will likely be a watershed moment in racing within the Land of Enchantment.
“Last year’s race meet was kind of rolling before the shutdown with full purse structure,” Boehm said. “The expectations are less than what they were before, but they’re enough to get people onto the racetrack.”
Boehm is optimistic about the future based on what he’s seen with the reopening of the casino floor at SunRay Park. The casino was allowed to reopen with limits on capacity last month, and the returns have been favorable.
“With the casino reopening and the casino at Sunland reopening, there’s been a coordinated industry effort to make this work,” Boehm said. “As the whole business gets better, the racing business gets better.”
The main challenge will be to attract horsemen back to the track, and as time moves on, returning them to New Mexico.
Evans, who’s been a mainstay in New Mexico racing for more than a decade, has his doubts about returning.
“It’s going to be hard to go there, even though (SunRay) is like the last of my favorite tracks,” Evans said. “It’s really the only place in the state that still has that hometown atmosphere to it. You never get that feeling from the other racetracks in the state.”
But it’s hard to ignore the current success Evans is having in Arizona.
According to Equibase, the official supplier for racing data and information, Evans has a more than 2-to-1 advantage in the trainer standings at Turf Paradise, where he has amassed 56 wins this season, which runs through May 1. A cursory glance of the top 10 leading trainers at Turf Paradise this season shows names which are familiar to New Mexico racing fans.
“The smaller horsemen have largely been put out of business,” Evans said, not only because of the lengthy shutdowns across New Mexico, but the uncertain future of the sport in the immediate future. “Too many people have been forced to reroute their lives, uproot their homes.”
That will be the challenge facing racing management at SunRay this season. Will they be able to attract enough horses to conduct a competitive racing season?
“My biggest worry is that we won’t have enough horses,” Fedunak admitted. “I feel bad because of the momentum we had and it’s kind of evaporated.”
An early gauge of the challenge ahead to fill a backstretch and have competitive racing for opening day and the days ahead was a decision by track management to allow horsemen to enter into races early, as much as 28 days in advance of the April 23 opening day. The idea was to show local horsemen that there would be a competitive season as well as attract out of town clients to bring their barns onto the backstretch.
“We didn’t know what the horse population was going to be this season, so we opted to have entries scheduled in advance,” Boehm said, “We didn’t want to wait until the last minute and find we didn’t have the population on the backstretch.”
So far, the results seem to be working in their favor. One of the more popular stakes races of the season, the $40,000 Russell and Helen Foutz Distaff Handicap that is scheduled to be run April 24, drew eight nominations according to the office of SunRay racing secretary Sean Winsor.
“Horsemen are excited to know we’re making the effort to come back,” Boehm said of the early entries.
But there are problems there, as well. Some horses which are eligible for races at the end of this month may not be eligible on the actual race day. The horses may win a race, which eliminates them from certain races written for non-winners. Some horses may have ownership changes or trainer changes. Some horsemen may decide simply to stay put in whatever racing circuit they happen to be plying their trade in at the moment.
“It’s tough for trainers to make plans that far in advance, and for some of those in Phoenix, it’s tough to know what races they can be a part of at SunRay,” said Bernadette Leyba-Barrios, an owner and trainer who has been working with other local horsemen to get the upcoming season off the ground. “It’s been such a struggle for so many of us this past year. But the smaller barns are the ones who are going to help the races fill.”
Leyba-Barrios also lamented that there is both a good and bad side to missing some of the bigger name trainers.
“Maybe it creates a more level playing field for those who are going to race here,” Leyba-Barrios said. “We may miss the big names, but in the short term, maybe the little guy can make a better living.”
To that end, it becomes apparent there are hurdles to overcome. There is no one right way to successfully navigate the return of live racing, but undoubtedly there will be a dozen or more methods to do it wrong, all of those decisions under the close eye of everyone involved.
“Thats been the toughest part of this, looking at what we’re going to have and not have,” Boehm said. “It’s been a constant game of chess. Looking at what would motivate people to get back on track, we’ve got people working here and remotely. There’s lot of changes and we’re hoping we’ll have people happy to be on track. Open expectations for different times.”
There is also a watchful eye on COVID-related shutdowns. Earlier this week, San Juan County went from a low-risk COVID positive designation to a high-risk. Under the newest guidelines, which will be in place for at least the next two weeks, recreational facilities as well as bars and clubs are permitted to operate with much more stringent restrictions on indoor and outdoor capacities.
This adds yet another wrinkle into an already challenging and difficult process, not only of recruiting horsemen to the facility, but for the casino and racetrack itself to ensure they remain compliant with current and rapidly changing state and county regulations.
“We’re optimistic that all the proper protocols have taken place and we’re happy to see the vaccinations happening,” Boehm said. “We’re trying to do what we can to make it as safe as possible for fans and horsemen, and we’re hopeful that the counties have done the work.”
Horsemen in the state of Colorado could also help play a role in the success of the upcoming SunRay meet.
Arapahoe Park, located east of Denver in neighboring Arapahoe County, recently announced its 2021 racing season would be pushed back from its normal opening in late spring to Aug. 11. There is hope that horsemen who would otherwise send their barns to Arapahoe would travel to SunRay to help fill the void in their calendars. A look at the local stall directory indicates that some Colorado-based horsemen have indeed made the move south.
“SunRay would be a natural fit for those horsemen,” Buffington said. “But transportation is difficult; transferring a barn is expensive, especially for such a short season. So many of these decisions are financial.”
For Buffington, who’s spent the past 40 years in the racing industry as both an owner and breeder, this past year has come at an extraordinary cost. But he remains optimistic about the reopening of SunRay Park and the direction the business will be headed once the track reopens for live racing.
“I think it’s going to be a decent meet, with an eye toward next year,” Buffington said. “With the casino reopening and soon business returning to normal, it’s possible horsemen across the state will be able to recover a lot of what’s been lost.”
The live, 18-day racing season is scheduled to be held Fridays through Sundays with a 2:15 p.m. post time each day through May 30.
