Fans blanching at Arlington's request to race next year from June1 to Oct. 28 are overlooking the possibility of some major conceptualupgrades.
Forget about the loss of the popular Mother's Day opening and thetraditional Memorial Day weekend. With the extended autumn dates,Arlington would get to forge new traditions on the classic racingholidays of Sweetest Day ("Swedish Day," to some chompy railbirds),Columbus Day and the Oct. 10 anniversary of Spiro Agnew'sresignation.
Arlington management could pump all of the honesty, expertise andsatisfied expectations it has injected into its current SummerFestival of Racing into a new Harvest Moon Festival of Racing. Maybethey could even promise another "$275,000 daily" in overnight purses-Arlington's "ha-ha promise," as it is now known in select Festivalcircles.
As a fall curtain-closer, the Lake County horse glitterati and thefreeloading dilettantes from the Illinois Racing Board could combinesocial energies to hold a devilishly early "Trackside Halloween EveBall."
Maybe later-like in 2003 or 2004 or 2020 or something-Arlingtonwould even get to host a Breeders' Cup Day. That would mean that on avague promise of one big afternoon, out of the next 5,000 or so, allof thoroughbred racing in Chicago is supposed to heel.
The Chicago thoroughbred 2001 dates applications released by theIRB on Monday were an insult to local fans. The National Jockey Club,which requested another death-star spring at its Sportsman'sStateville North, is clearly out of touch with market realities.Lapdog Hawthorne, in asking for its regular end-of-the-year schedule,displayed all the aggressiveness of pensioned gnats.
And Arlington-via its new alliance with Churchill Downs Inc.-weighed in with nothing short of unbridled arrogance. Its new datesmessage is simple: All of flat racing in Illinois will now spin onthe evolving simulcasting dictates of a remote Kentucky corporation.
Current managers over Arlington seem concerned with two primarypursuits-salvaging the last big legislative score and effectivelyimplementing an end-reign strategy for Richard L. Duchossois.
On a day-to-day basis-as far too many discouraged fans anddispirited employees will readily attest-the level of attention paidto customer satisfaction and enhancing the quality of racing at thelisting track doesn't even seem to crack management's Top Ten.
That Duchossois deserves a Breeders' Cup Day there is no argument.But that the operational legs of Chicago thoroughbred racing shouldhave to alter course every time the whim-vane atop Church-Arlingtonshifts direction is daffy. And it puts the local live version of thesport squarely on an accelerating path to elitist extinction.
But, if nothing else, at least fans of the new Church-Arlingtonwill always have Swedish Day.
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