Via TD Thornton
Nine days after the shocking news that Grants Pass Downs canceled the 2022 race meeting and will let the track’s commercial license lapse, Randy Boden, executive director of the Oregon Riders’ Protection and Benevolence Association (OHBPA), revealed that plans are being made to keep it Oregon’s southern track is open for training and possibly a short-term race fair meet this summer, with the ultimate goal of bringing in a larger race team by 2023.
“When it became clear that [Grants Pass Downs] will not renew their commercial license, we decided it was best for HBPA to seek that license on its own in order to continue meeting the trade as well as the obvious benefits of the over-the-air betting (OTB) network. ,” Boden said at the April 21 meeting of the Oregon Racing Commission (ORC).
ORC CEO Jack McGrail welcomed the tentative actions of OHBPA, the short-term goal being to maintain the state’s four-stop summer fair circuit while plans for a longer trade meeting , more feasible, funded by OHBPA was launched.
McGrail said: “Obviously, the cancellation of the Grants Pass Downs caused a little bit of controversy for us. “Even though things are a bit difficult right now, there is still a way forward if we can use that facility. It has been greatly improved and it really is a song where we can have some really long and good encounters. So those improvements give us the opportunity to grow. “
McGrail continued: “We are working towards, hopefully, a successful summer fair season…. That track at Grants Pass is an important training facility, even if it doesn’t host a trade meeting. And without it, it’s hard to see how our horsemen and women would have had the opportunity to get their horses up to the running time at these fairs.”
Travis Boersma took over Grants Pass Downs, located on the Josephine County Fairgrounds, in 2019. After making significant capital improvements and looking for historic horse racing to finance a race there, The ORC recently voted to refuse to license the portion of the game that operates on comments from the Department of Justice calling the project unconstitutional because of the way the state’s gambling laws are set up.
So on April 12, Boersma pulled the plug on the upcoming racing season, saying “Grants Pass Downs has lost its economic engine.”
During Thursday’s meeting, Grants Pass Downs president Randy Evers confirmed that Boersma was not a scam.
“I am sad to say that we do not have enough horses to hold a successful trade meeting,” Evers said in a brief presentation to the committee. “The riders and women have until April 30 to get out of the back. It will then be closed. We have a couple of horses left over and a couple of recreational facilities that we’re sure will be all leaving next week.
“The plan is to operate the off-chain betting OTB network until June 30. That’s when [the] racing license expired. That goes on to bring in some revenue for our horse associations; racing commission and offer opportunity if someone wants to take over OTB network and commercial racing license at that time. “
That’s where OHBPA will step in.
“That was our plan,” Boden said. “We will be part of that process. As you know, it’s a very broad thing… there must be everything so that there is no delay from the end of June 30 to the beginning of July 1, so that the OTB network does not go down.
“We also received a list of devices from [Grants Pass Downs] Boden said.
“Obviously we’re going to need the right gear to run a race, everything from the starting gate to the stalls to the tractors and so on and so forth, all down the line. So we’ll go over that list as we speak, and we’ll absorb as much as we can to achieve our goals in that regard. “
Two years ago, Oregon’s racing community rallied around Grants Pass Downs, which transitioned from the fairground racetrack to being the only commercial licensee in Oregon after the closure of Portland Meadows. The Grants Pass featured a 35-day encounter season in two staggered encounters, May through July and September through November.
The plan is for the Grants Pass to combine with the four state summer fairs. Traditionally, the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show meeting at Union kicked off that round in June. Crooked River Roundup in Prineville then followed in July. The Tillamook County Fair in Tillamook takes place in August. The Harney County Fair in Burns completed its round of fairs in September.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic wiped all four fairs off the map in 2020, and Grants Pass Downs has native support for this circuit.
The start of 2021 looks promising. But by May, Harney executives told the ORC it wouldn’t work.
In July, track and field athlete Eduardo Gutiérrez Sosa was killed in a horse racing accident around the Crooked River.
November 9, 2021, is the last day of the Oregon racing season. It turned out to be an ominous omen as the half-mile oval at Grants Pass plunged into total darkness eight seconds into the final race when the track’s lights suddenly went out, leaving the fields of six runners The sprinter rushed in first blindly. the bend of a three-turn race.
Since then, there hasn’t been a sanctioned horse race in Oregon.
“We are looking at the possibility of further working with the Southern Oregon Horse Racing Association (SOHRA) to see if there is a possibility to organize a short race between the end of Union and the start of Prineville,” said Boden. “Currently, since we don’t have a racing license until June, we are not qualified to host a meet-up race like the HBPA, but SOHRA has many years of experience organizing meet-race races at the HBPA. Grants Pass [prior to Boersma taking over]. ”
Boden said that SOHRA had a meeting scheduled for Thursday night, well past the deadline for this story. He expects them to discuss and possibly vote on partnering with OHBPA to bring racing back to the Grants Pass.
“And if it works [SOHRA] If we want to do that, then we’re going to have to be willing to sponsor that meeting in order to go forward that way,” Boden said. “That would be optimal.”
Boden then focused on the fairground meetings.
“We have to have something open to train. These horses are not suitable. They weren’t ready to run,” said Boden. “And so the last thing we want is the horses that are not ready for the rest of the fair, because that would be a negative for the fairs and the number of horses that are willing to go there – as well. like the fact that some horses can go to Wyoming or Montana. And any horse that goes that far will not come back to run at our fairs.
“We want to keep our horses in as much shape as possible. We wanted to be able to give the riders a place to train, and make sure that if nothing else happened, we would have a very successful summer fair season. The fairs are important to all of us, and we will give them full support,” said Boden.
“Finally, in the future we talk about ’23, we’ll be able to once again put together a commercial race and let us come back to ourselves a little bit on that. ”
