Groundhog Day arrived early for horse racing this winter,
and it feels like it blew up in our faces like Ned Ryerson’s sure-as-heck-fire
memory.

We long have heard the fears about hitching our game’s money
wagon to the slot-machine star, hoping against hope that it would not be
decoupled. Doomsayers have been telling us for years racing was on borrowed
time in California, especially in the north. And the incessant carping about
small fields in graded stakes has been like Shaq and Sir Charles arguing about
Jimmy Butler to the point E.J. had to declare, “We’re about to do our third lap
saying the same thing.”

Flatter Pod: State of the game & Kentucky Derby preps.

This month that brought us Gulfstream Park’s tenuous future
and Northern California’s death knell and fewer pill pulls at Santa Anita
mercifully is in its final hours. Since Punxsutawney Phil is an odds-on
favorite to present us with an early spring from Sunday’s opener at Gobbler’s
Knob, the object of this column this particular week is to try to take some of
the bleakness off the horizon.

Yes, it really is me. I, Doomsboy, am not being held
hostage. Married, yes. Kidnapped, no.

Normally I would be expected to hector about the challenges
of eroded foal crops and shrunken purses and rapacious computer betting and
rising takeout and cheating horsemen and crumbling racetracks. Even though they are not going away,
it says here there is enough of a foundation elsewhere on which the future of
racing may be built. For the moment, my eyes are cocked.

First, we have to get over the idea we ever will see halcyon
days again. The sooner we dismiss the thoughts of weekday crowds in excess of
20,000 and network telecasts revving up weekend races to a ratings crescendo,
the better we may fulfill realistic expectations.

The truth is there are three states in America where racing
is doing just fine. They are Kentucky, New York and Arkansas. All three have
side-hustle gaming money filling their purses, and all three have made
significant investments in their signature racing properties.

Churchill Downs speaks for itself, especially since it is a
construction site 11 months a year. Keeneland, also in a building mood, is
crowded practically every day of its spring and fall meets. Turfway Park
attracts full fields more often than not. Kentucky Downs is a bucket-list stop
for fans and horsemen chasing big bucks. Even though Ellis Park is like the
.182 hitter who plays defense well enough to stay in the lineup, the rest of
the batting order is loaded. The commonwealth also accounts for more than half
the new Thoroughbred foals every year. Kentucky is the Los Angeles Dodgers of
racing.

New York, of course, is the Yankees. In the heart of the
state’s breeding region, Saratoga is the greatest calling card our game has.
Unlike the two-day bacchanal of the Kentucky Oaks and Derby, those two months
every upstate summer are as close as we are going to reliving the good ol’
days. The state’s $455 million loan to rebuild Belmont Park is as important a one-off
commitment as any government ever has made to the sport. Aqueduct sadly is on
borrowed time, and future winters of synthetic-track racing at Belmont already
are a bone of contention. Still, the sport is on strong legs in and around the
nation’s economic hub.

Arkansas is not exactly traditional horse country, but we
would not know it from the crowds of people who pour into that jewel of a track
in the Ouachita Mountains. Not just the grandstand. Oaklawn has that fairly new
hotel and casino that I cannot afford, and it always seems to be sold out for
big racing weekends. Purses are no problem there. While California struggles to
find enough horses and money to fashion a $300,000 Grade 1, the Cella family throw
10 times that much at a Grade 3 race like the Southwest Stakes. Oaklawn is the
Green Bay Packers.

Those are the three franchises that represent racing’s bull
market. Even if the rest of the country lets all its tracks rot away, it is impossible
to imagine Kentucky, New York and Arkansas abandoning the sport altogether.

I am not trying to ignore the problems that are present even
in these utopian landscapes I have colored so brightly. All these states are
dependent on the same sort of casino money that may be ripped away soon in
Florida and next in Virginia, which until a decoupling threat reared its ugly
head this week seemed like another racing state on the rise. Who is to say future politicos will not seize on a shift in the wind to move slot-machine
money and historic horse-racing dollars to pay for something more trendy, even
in our richest racing states?

There also is the not-so-small matter of losing the ranks of
horses and humans who are the engine for this sport in about three dozen states
that do not have the glamor of a Derby week or a Spa summer or a Hot Springs
spring. The major leagues still need a minor-league system to grow the talent.
Without overnight races with claimers and maidens and a-other-thans, the whole
sport crumbles.

I wish I had an answer for all that threatens racing’s
substructure. Who is going to try to raise Thoroughbreds in California if
there is no place to run them there? The same goes for South Florida and
Virginia and Maryland, and the list goes on.

Alabama and Wyoming are trying to make headway with new
racing ventures. Those are modest seedlings, but at least they carry a morsel
or two of hope.

Let’s face it. Three states do not a Horse Racing Nation
make, and Horse Racing Archipelago does not have the same ring to it.

The most important asset that is not going away is racing’s
core of bettors. Horseplayers are the most loyal customers in any sport. Name
another business that continues to serve up bowls full of shortsightedness and
avarice and still find its customers displaying unfettered loyalty and its
front door every day. Once racing’s establishment figures out that it should
quit dumping on this invaluable constituency, then it actually might find ways to
build on these positives.

Lacking the wisdom to solve the bigger problems, I am here this
week simply trying to salve the pain we all have been feeling from a month of
gut punches. Who among us has not wondered if we really are near the end of the
road for pari-mutuel racing? I simply had to dust off the pom-poms.

As yestercentury late-night talk show host Jack Paar used to
say, “You have to believe me, because if you don’t, we have nothing.” I feel
the same way about racing right now. If we don’t try to build on the positives
of this sport, we have nothing.

Now that I have gone all Pollyandy for a week, I will wait
for someone to tell me that I am all fluffed up and should remember January
2025. Accurately.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse
Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed,
encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.