Fading Fast

The field is turning for home and heading down the stretch. It might be the Kentucky Derby or it might be the first race at a little track in the boondocks. It makes no difference. The spectacle is always the same in thoroughbred racing. So here they come, digging in and matching strides as they pound for the wire, the afternoon sun glinting off the jockeys' silks and the sweat that glistens on the horses' flanks as they strain against each other and the clock and even history, precisely as they have been bred to do for generations. The crowd's roar swells, all but drowning out the hoarse rasp of the public-address announcer and the thunder of the hooves.

This is the magic of horse racing, the reason millions of Americans have been drawn irresistibly to the nation's tracks for almost a century. It has helped, of course, that until the last decade or so, the racetrack was virtually the only place outside Las Vegas where gambling was both socially acceptable and legally permissible, but that's only part of it. Americans always have been suckers for horses and horse stories, not to mention romance, mystery, danger and luck. The racetrack has them all.

In its heyday, the 1920s through the late '50s, the thoroughbred game was arguably the nation's second-most popular professional sport, behind only Major League Baseball. Racing's heroes, horses with marvelous names like Gallant Fox and Whirlaway and Count Fleet, were wildly popular, as were jockeys like Earl Sande and Eddie Arcaro. And the nation's major tracks—Belmont Park in New York and Hialeah in Florida and Santa Anita in California—were what Caesars in Atlantic City and the Mirage in Las Vegas are today, monuments to high rolling and high living.

But after decades of tranquillity and prosperity, thoroughbred racing in America declined sharply in the 1980s. Old tracks closed and new ones flopped. Track attendance dropped nationally from an average of 8,907 a day in 1965 to 6,834 in 1989. Even in New York, whose tracks have long been the sport's centerpiece, attendance declined so steeply that at Belmont Park and Aqueduct—facilities that were built to accommodate masses of people—the cries of losing bettors echoed in near-empty stands.

And that was not the only problem. Stricter tax laws forced many longtime owners out of racing and discouraged new ones from coming in. The thoroughbred sales market dropped so sharply that FOR SALE signs are out in front of horse farms everywhere, even in the hallowed bluegrass country of Kentucky. A serious credibility problem developed because of racing's inability to resolve its drug crisis. These are not the signs of a healthy industry.

The reasons for the slump aren't hard to detect. In the 1980s, home videos mushroomed into a $10 billion industry, taking patrons away from the track. The proliferation of state lotteries and their seductive promises of instant fortune hurt every phase of the gaming business. The movies boomed. So did football, basketball, baseball and golf. And, most vexing of all, racing found itself competing against itself when it embraced the brave new world of high-tech TV gambling, which takes fans away from tracks and pulls them into off-site wagering facilities, raising serious questions about the future of live racing.

Can racing survive? Or has it become a quaint anachronism that the video/entertainment/gambling boom will eventually kill as surely as the automotive revolution of the early 1900s rendered the horse obsolete as a beast of burden? An odyssey made in an attempt to answer these questions begins in the state that for decades has been the winter home of the most prestigious New York stables and their well-bred stock.

Hallandale, Fla.

It is so overcast at Gulfstream Park on opening day, Jan. 14, that even from the upper press box it's impossible to see the Atlantic Ocean, less than a mile away. Even so, a crowd of 20,000 has turned out for the races. Some may have come to see the 3-year-old debut of Oregon, a Kentucky Derby contender trained by D. Wayne Lukas, but most were probably lured by management's promotion: free admission and a free two-dollar bet.

Edwin Pope, the sports editor of the Miami Herald, is sitting in the press box. According to his readership surveys, he probably should be writing his next day's column about the Dolphins, the Heat, the Hurricanes or almost anything but thoroughbred racing. "Once, horse racing was the king in South Florida," says Pope, "but now it ranks way down the list." But because he loves thoroughbreds, Pope always tries to make the opening of Gulfstream.