Betting on the slots

BALTIMORE

Cars packed the parking lots and side streets. Trains and buses were flooded with passengers. The infield and grandstands were jammed. The wait at lines at betting windows and concession stands lasted longer than the races.

Yesterday was “Super Saturday” for Maryland racing. The 131st Preakness Stakes — won by Bernardini, but marred by the career-ending and potentially life-threatening injury to Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro — drew a record crowd of 118,402 to Pimlico Race Course, the 136-year old racetrack along the city’s Northern Parkway.

Today, though, reality returns. There will be no traffic. The infield will be closed. Lines will be short. And the quality of horse talent will be far below that of Preakness stars Barbaro, Brother Derek and Sweetnorthernsaint.

Maryland racing still has a place on the Mid-Atlantic scene, but its position is becoming more perilous.

“Preakness Day is the anomaly for the industry in Maryland,” said Cricket Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. “[Today] is the harsh reality. People are struggling to stay here. They don’t want to move, but it’s becoming a slow erosion. Each year we don’t get slots, a few more people give up and move to Pennsylvania or Delaware.”

Attendance has declined 50 percent at Pimlico and Laurel Park since 1989, according to the Maryland Jockey Club. The amount of money wagered dropped to $337 million last year from $433 million in 1999. Several of Maryland’s top trainers still are headquartered in the state, but they more often are sending their horses to run in richer races elsewhere.

And Maryland racing faces ever-increasing competition from out-of-state tracks that have slot machines.

Racetracks in the neighboring states of West Virginia and Delaware added slots in the past decade, generating revenue used to increase the purses awarded to winning horses and attract better fields. Harness and thoroughbred tracks in seven states already have slots or video lottery terminals, and tracks in three other states, including nearby Pennsylvania, plan to add gambling as well.

The fate of slots in Maryland, meanwhile, remains uncertain.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, pledged when he took office four years ago to bring slots to Maryland tracks. However, a measure to approve slots died in the General Assembly in March, the fourth straight year gambling legislation failed.

Election-year politics perhaps played a role.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., a Democrat, was a slots ally for Mr. Ehrlich the past three years, pushing legislation through the Senate.

This year, Mr. Miller, who obviously wants to see a Democrat defeat Mr. Ehrlich this year, canceled a hearing on slots set for mid-March, effectively giving the legislation a quick death in 2006.

Those who want slot machines at Pimlico, Laurel Park and other locations in the state cite the need to create new revenue streams to increase purses and breeding funds and in turn help keep the state’s top trainers and owners from leaving.

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