Saving Baby

Author:Jo Anne Normile
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466866843
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER TEN

I spent the winter healing in the barn, the decision not to go back to the track made easier by the Detroit Race Course’s announcement that the coming 1998 season would be its last. The higher-ups had been hoping to install slot machines and transform the racecourse into a racino. But the state of Michigan turned them down. Casino Windsor had already opened just across the river from Detroit in Canada, a true Vegas-style casino just thirty-five minutes away. And downtown Detroit, just twenty minutes along the expressway, was due to get three casinos, approved on a ballot by popular vote. All these new casinos, very powerful with a lot of money to throw behind their claims to the local territory, were never going to let a racino materialize. The track would be closing.

Two years earlier, I had worked very hard to procure slot machines for the racecourse, pushing for it as a member of the HBPA’s political action committee and even participating in a press conference held in the state capitol. My personal stock with the track’s higher-ups had risen astronomically. “I never want to be on the other side of you,” Ladbroke executive Bill Bork said to me at the time, pleased with my presentation. Now here we were, exactly in that position. With my suing the track, I couldn’t be more on the other side.

The decision to close helped explain why Ladbroke dragged its heels fixing the racecourse and did such a shoddy job of overseeing the repairs. It had no doubt already known that it would be shuttering its gates.

My wish to make right on Baby’s death notwithstanding, my resolve never to return was only strengthened by the news. Rather than feel I could handle trying to save horses for just one more year, I knew that an imminent permanent closing would mean the need for trainers to get rid of more horses than ever—a number I would find too overwhelming.

Michigan had always been a racing state, with a lot of trainers who actually put down roots there rather than travel nomadically from track to track throughout the country, as many do. In the 1950s, the Detroit Race Course was considered one of the premier tracks, right up there with Churchill Downs, so to work there had once come with a certain prestige. Once the track closed, trainers who had made their homes in Michigan would not take their horses somewhere else; they would get out of the business—and get rid of their Thoroughbreds as expediently as possible. I had already been through a season during which I lost more horses than I saved. I knew that in this climate of trainers needing to get rid of even sound horses, my efforts would be futile. Besides, I had already exhausted potential sport discipline buyers with my articles in local newsletters. There was no one else to tap into.

Taking care of my own horses at home had the effect of a tonic. Being near them warmed me, and I could feel my depression lift some.

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