Posts Tagged ‘john hendrickson’

By Ray Paulick

Saratoga opens, and so do the skies.

That sums up the first several days of the upstate New York Spa’s business, which is not good news for a bankrupt organization that says it will need more bailout money from the state sometime in the next couple of months. Heavy rains washed away numerous turf races and showers even made an unscheduled appearance on Whitney day.

The NYRA has survived far worse weather patterns, including the near-perfect storm of a federal indictment, bankruptcy and a franchise renewal drama whose end-game could have led to a game of "musical boxes" on the front row of those cherished clubhouse seats at Saratoga. In the end, power and tradition won the day for the old guard, thanks to some new guard knee-capping by the dynamic NYRA chairman, Steve Duncker, a Wall Street fightin’ man originally from the anything but hardscrabble suburbs of St. Louis (west, not east St. Loo).

Fortunately for NYRA’s trustees and executives, there are some people around who make them look human, led by the husband-wife team of John Hendrickson and Marylou Whitney, who took backstretch philanthropy into their own hands (with assistance from a group of local businesses and horsemen) by providing weekly banquets and nightly movies for the stable hands.

BUT THE EARTH DOESN’T ACTUALLY CIRCLE around Saratoga in July and August (though some may think it does). There’s also Del Mar, whose first-week business declines had the guys in Hawaiian shirts and sandals looking very grim until a gigantic wave of Pick Six mania washed ashore on the July 26-27 weekend, contributing (along with a free concert and micro-brew festival) to the ninth-highest handle in track history. No one picked all six winners and $1.5 million carries over into Sunday’s Pick Six, promising to make that program a big one, too.

Purse cuts looked imminent, but maybe the surge can work where the Turf meets the Surf.

Incidentally, Del Mar won the head-to-head battle of the gate against Saratoga on Saturday, 32,291 at Del Mar to 29,655 at Saratoga. Saratoga won the handle bout, $25,017,333 at Saratoga to $20,531,679 at Del Mar. Del Mar’s numbers were way up from 2007, when just 24,873 attended on the same day. Saratoga’s were down 9.7% in handle and 5.9% in attendance from 2007 when 31,510 were on hand for the first "Win and You’re In" day and handle was $27,708,217.

HIALEAH PARK’S John Brunetti was among those in the large Del Mar crowd on Saturday (he lives in nearby Rancho Santa Fe). Brunetti told the Paulick Report that he is hoping to bring live racing back to Hialeah Park on his own accord and doesn’t need the help of Halsey Minor, the cash-rich, Internet-savvy Virginian who actually is willing to invest tens of millions of his own cyber dollars into not only reopening Hialeah Park but making it a showplace.

Poor old Mr. B (it could stand for "beleaguered") just doesn’t get it. Brunetti seems to be a very nice man, but he’s been consistently outfoxed by Doug Donn, Ken Dunn, Churchill Downs and even Frank Stronach in the South Florida racing wars, and his same old "woe is me" song to state legislators isn’t going to change things for the better. He hasn’t run a live race at Hialeah since 2001, and he ran many horseplayers years earlier when he jacked up the takeout to unprecedented rates following deregulation.

But there is an unmistakable opportunity to bring Hialeah Park back if Brunetti is willing to put his ego and bluster aside. He could ride off into the sunset a hero as the man who kept the Hialeah Park dream alive long enough for the new sheriff to come into town and clean up.

The Paulick Report will have more on Hialeah and Halsey Minor in the coming week.

DID I MENTION EGO AND BLUSTER? That leads me to Aurora, Ontario, Canada, home of Magna Entertainment, which lost another top manager last week with the resignation of Scott Borgemenke, the vice president of racing. This management change was another in a long line of executive exits in Frank Stronach’s empire detailed in the Paulick Report.

Stronach does some things right … breeding horses, for example. His champion filly, Ginger Punch, was one of the on-track stars at Saratoga during the Breeders’ Cup’s "Win and You’re In" telecast on ABC Saturday afternoon (which featured an entertaining back-and-back forth between Michael Iavarone and Rick Dutrow, the owner-trainer team that handles Big Brown). In winning the Go for Wand under tough circumstances (every jockey in the race tried to keep her boxed up), the daughter of Awesome Again displayed the kind of guts and determination every breeder would like to see in his or her horses. She was impressive.

So was Tracy and Carol Farmer’s 7-year-old Commentator, who ran away with the Whitney in powerful fashion. Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito said the win was one of the high points of his own career and puts the New York-bred gelding by Distorted Humor in the same league as Kelso and Forego, two legendary geldings from the past.

Heady company indeed. 

Copyright ©2008, The Paulick Report

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A new program awaits backstretch workers when the New York Racing Association kicks off its summer meeting at Saratoga racetrack in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Wednesday, thanks to John Hendrickson and his wife, Marylou Whitney, the longtime Queen of Saratoga.

Mike Veitch wrote in the Saratogian newspaper on April 30 that Hendrickson was putting together a program for "themed" dinners every Sunday night in addition to movies five nights a week during the 36-day meeting that runs through Labor Day, Sept. 1.

The dinners are being prepared by the same caterers who do the fund-raising galas for which Marylou Whitney is so famous. Hendrickson is coordinating the program with the Racetrack Chaplaincy and the Backstretch Employees Services Team (BEST). According to Veitch’s article, the dinners will take place on the Yaddo grounds adjacent to the "Jockey Y" recreation facility on Union Avenue.

Next Sunday’s kickoff dinner, as a tribute to the many Hispanic workers on the backstretch, is a Mexican fiesta, and will be funded by Whitney and Hendrickson.

Groups or individuals funding the other dinners are: Aug. 3 (Chinese), Stewart’s Shops; Aug. 10 (Italian), Ron and Michelle Riggi, Gainesway Farm and Overbrook Farm; Aug. 17 (Cuban), Jack and Debby Oxley and Tracy and Carol Farmer; Aug. 24 (Barbecue), Price Chopper; and Aug. 31 (Thanksgiving), Three Chimneys Farm, Live Oak Plantation, and Lane’s End. Additional sponsors for the program include Ed and Maureen Lewi, Pomegranate Inc., Allerdice Rentals, Panza’s Restaurant, Dogwood Stables, NYRA, Racetrack Chaplaincy and BEST.

Movies will be shown Wednesday through Sunday nights throughout the meeting on a 9 x 12 screen, either with Spanish subtitles or in Spanish. Commercial popcorn machines have been purchased by sponsors for the movies.

"Everyone I asked to help out said ‘yes,’" said Hendrickson, recently named but not yet confirmed as a member of the reconstituted NYRA board of trustees by powerful Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, who announced his retirement this year. "This is a way trustees should get involved," he added.

With Bruno gone, New York racing no longer will have a strong advocate in state government. David Paterson, who became New York governor in March following the sex-scandal resignation of Eliot Spitzer, has made public comments critical of NYRA since taking office. At one point he even hinted that the process to give NYRA a franchise renewal be reopened.

Paterson has an interesting family tie to the sport and to the Whitney family that he mentioned briefly during the Belmont Stakes telecast June 7. His great-grandfather was a farrier who shod Harry Payne Whitney’s Upset for his victory over Man o’ War in the 1919 Sanford Stakes. It was Man o’ War’s only career loss and it is widely believed to have brought the term "upset" into the English vernacular.

H.P. Whitney was so happy following the Sanford he gave houses to several of the men who contributed to Upset’s victory, including one to Paterson’s great-grandfather. That was the house Paterson lived in as a child, according to Hendrickson, who says the governor affectionately calls Marylou Whitney "Cuz."

I guess a governor can get away with that. Everyone else around the area calls her the Queen of Saratoga. And it’s easy to see why. She is a beloved figure who has raised money for charitable causes for decades, especially in New York’s Capital District.

One of my only experiences with Mrs. Whitney came in a very odd way. While visiting the area before the race meeting one summer a dozen or so years ago for an event at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs, I saw her in the lobby bar of the Marriott Hotel near the Albany airport. There she was in the middle of a big crowd, playing darts with college-aged kids in a fundraiser for some charity I’ve long since forgotten. Television cameras were there with live coverage of the event during the local news, and she was encouraging people to come down to the Marriott and challenge her to a game.

Her energy then was amazing, and her dedication to worthy causes like the new backstretch workers program at Saratoga remains strong to this day.

By Ray Paulick

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