'Match' Proposal Muddies Future of $1.2M Charles Town Classic

One regulator's “compromise” can be another track executive's “nail in the coffin.”

That's how a vote to impose an unorthodox form of 50/50 “matching” track and purse account funding on the GII Charles Town Classic was portrayed at the Jan. 23 West Virginia Racing Commission (WVRC) meeting, which featured an unprecedented standoff over the seemingly routine approval of the $1.2-million signature stakes event at Charles Town Races.

In a carryover agenda item from December that had at first seemed like it would generate little debate and a perfunctory okaying based on past precedent, the WVRC once again on Tuesday took up the issue of whether it would approve Charles Town's entire 2018 open stakes schedule, which was to be anchored by the Apr. 21 Classic.

At last month's meeting, the WVRC had to table its approval of Charles Town's stakes program after first-year commissioner Ken Lowe Jr. said he could not sign off on a seven-figure purse for just a single race. That money, he argued, would better serve West Virginia racing if it was instead spread out over a series of smaller races that might benefit local horsemen, and he had proposed that the WVRC only approve the purse of the Classic at no higher than $300,000.

Charles Town executives, in response, maintained that the Classic has become the calling card for the track since the nine-furlong race for older horses was established in 2009, and that the 8% expenditure from the purse account to fund stakes races has been fully approved as per the negotiated contract with the local Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA). The Classic, they argued, pays dividends in terms of boosted year-round handle and serves as a marketing tool that gets the track noticed on a national level.

When the agenda item came up on Tuesday, WVRC executive director Joe Moore read into the record a survey of other racing commissions he had been asked to compile, stating that “None of those jurisdictions that were surveyed have ever denied a stakes request” so long as local horsemen approved of the purse allocation. He noted the Charles Town HBPA had supplied such a consent letter.

Erich Zimny, Charles Town's vice president of racing operations, then spoke about the importance of maintaining funding for the Classic at $1.2 million. His halo-effect rationale included the facts that daily per-race handle at the track is up 65% since the Classic was first run in 2009, purses paid to West Virginia-breds have essentially doubled over that same time frame, and that the Classic's purse has already taken a 20% cut from its $1.5 million peak several years ago.

“It would really be putting a dagger into this industry and this program,” to further educe the Classic's purse, Zimny said.

Lowe countered with this proposal, which he termed a “compromise” and put into the form of a motion: Charles Town could accept his standing offer to approve a $300,000 Classic funded solely out of the purse account. Or, he said, if Charles Town wanted to put on a Classic for up to $1.2 million, he would consent to a 50/50 funding scheme whereby the WVRC would approve letting half of that money come from the purse account if the track covered the other half out of its own operational pocket.

Zimny replied that such a scheme was not only unworkable from Charles Town's financial point of view, but out of step with the way other American racetracks put together stakes programs.

“For the edification of folks who may not know, that is completely contrary to how almost any big-race purse in the country is funded,” Zimny said. “Five-hundred thousand in cash as a ratio of our revenues in racing is a large number. That's nothing that we could ever do. It runs contrary to how stakes purses and how purses in general are funded as the status quo, and that's not how it's done. This motion in front of us, if we accept it, we're going to take a hit financially as a racing operation. And if we say no, we're going to take a hit financially as a racing operation. So what do we do?”

Lowe suggested that Charles Town agree to however the commission votes on the matter, then the two sides can try to hammer out further elements of compromise at a later date.

“Like it or not, we are in a forced marriage. We are in a shotgun wedding in a sense,” Lowe said. “The whole idea here is to get owners back into the game. I'm an owner who left. Why did I leave? Because of the unstability of racing in West Virginia in Charles Town. It is guys like me…that make the game go 'round. [Racing in the state] is dying now…. We can make West Virginia racing better again, and I'm going to stick by what I'm saying here.”

Commissioner Anthony Figaretti seconded the motion and chairman Jack Rossi called the vote, which passed without opposition.

Executive director Moore then pointed out that the agenda item had actually pertained to voting on Charles Town's 2018 stakes schedule, not coming up with an alternate plan to fund the Classic. Rossi said he needed a motion to that effect. Zimny replied that he'd have to come back before the commission with a different stakes slate, because it now won't be the same as the one initially proposed.

“'Nail in the coffin' is a good phrase for what has been done here,” Zimny said before thanking the commissioners and leaving the podium.

In a phone interview after the meeting, Zimny said Charles Town won't officially pull the plug on the Classic just yet, but that it won't be run for a “ridiculously” reduced purse, either.

“We're not talking a drop of $100,000 in the purse. We're talking $1.2 million to $300,000, which puts us almost half a million dollars beneath the [GII $750,000] Oaklawn Handicap,” Zimny said. “It does not work. We would not run the race at that point, and getting so close to April as it is, recruiting for the race is very difficult. Something's got to be resolved in the next week or two for [an as-scheduled running of the Classic] to be pulled off.”

Lowe and Charles Town executives have clashed before. In 2011, when Lowe was president of the Charles Town HBPA, track management ejected him from the property for allegedly violating of Charles Town's house rule against solicitation (authorizing the distribution of political flyers). Lowe told TDN in December that a lawsuit he initiated against Charles Town over the matter resulted in an out-of-court settlement in his favor that he cannot discuss, but he emphatically denied that the litigation had any effect on his ability to regulate the track as a commissioner. -@thorntontd