Like many a teenager, the Arlington Million, which will celebrate its 16th birthday Sunday, has reached a point where the seemingly wondrous opportunities of its youth are tempered by some harsh impending realities of everyday life.
These are changing times not only in American racing but throughout the thoroughbred world. The status quo–locally, nationally and internationally–bears scant resemblance to the 1981 landscape.
The Million has seen its home, Arlington Park, destroyed by fire on July 31, 1985. It then spent three years living in a tent-city setting. In 1988 it moved temporarily to Canada’s Woodbine before returning in 1989 to its palatial present abode, Arlington International Racecourse.
But although the Million is living in a palace it no longer is the world’s richest race. There are a lot of million-dollar races in this country, including one worth $4 million, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and another worth $2 million, the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
The 1984 birth of the seven-race Breeders’ Cup championship series–with its two European-accented grass races, the Turf and the $1 million Mile–accelerated the trend toward international racing.
But it also should be noted that in the early ’90s America lost the Washington D.C. International, which in 1952 had pioneered multinational competition in this country.
Overseas the $4 million Dubai World Cup came into the racing world in 1996 and overnight became the world’s premier international event.
But Dubai’s impact on the domestic and international racing scene was already being felt. The Persian Gulf state, one of seven that form the United Arab Emirates, is ruled by the Maktoum family.
During the 1980s these oil-rich sheikhs, Mohammed al Maktoum, Maktoum al Maktoum, Hamdan al Maktoum and Rashid al Maktoum, began a multimillion-dollar foreign buying binge on the American yearling market.
They and bidding rivals such as Robert Sangster, Khalid Abdullah and Mahmoud Fustok, took virtually all of their acquisitions to England, Ireland and France to race.
There were several ramifications. America lost its most promising bloodstock. Top breeders in this country began supplying horses designed to meet the demands of European racing. The foreign buyers, particularly the Maktoums, became the world powers in thoroughbred racing.
In 1980 the Maktoums accounted for 6.3 percent of the gross at Keeneland’s top-of-the-line July Sale. This percentage rose steadily, reaching a peak of 44 percent in 1989 when they paid $44,125,000 for 67 yearlings.
In the mid-1980s there was a bidding war involving the Maktoum brothers and Sangster and associates. The Sangster group paid a world record $13.1 million for a yearling colt named Seattle Dancer in 1985 and the third highest price in public auction history, $10.2 million for a yearling colt named Imperial Falcon in 1984.
Nick Clarke, managing director of the England-based International Racing Bureau that serves as Arlington’s overseas agent, saw the handwriting on the wall. “Some of the best yearlings that would have been retained in the United States have come to Europe because of the Arabs,” he said in 1985, translating yearling economics into racing potential. “The Arabs also are standing at stud over here (in Europe) horses which might otherwise have gone back to America.
“In their breeding operation they have a much longer-term way of looking at it than most Europeans do. They will continue to help Europe produce a very strong breeding operation.”
Predictably, the buying binges ended. Prices tapered off gradually, then plunged. In 1994 America’s leading breeders took a tremendous hit when foreign expenditures at Keeneland’s July Sale declined to 31.1 percent of the gross and the Maktoums’ acquisitions accounted for only 7 percent.
The next two years the Maktoums’ investment fell to family lows of 4.1 and 4.4 percent, but that was offset by a surge in Japanese buying. Japanese buyers produced 20 percent of the gross revenue in 1995 and 32.6 percent in 1996.
While the Maktoums are racing their horses throughout the world, the Japanese typically are taking them home to a booming racing market that is protected from all but minimal foreign competition.
Even more significant than their yearling investments are their stallion and broodmare acquisitions.
Sunday Silence, who won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic en route to becoming North America’s 1989 Horse of the Year, now is the No. 1 stallion in Japan. Several other top sires in Japan also are ex-American stakes-winners with impressive pedigrees.
Daily Racing Form pedigree expert S.H. Fernando reported that East Stud, “one of the most prominent stallion stations in Japan,” signed an agreement with Chicagoan Jeff Sullivan and Ben Walden Jr. of the Vinery breeding farm in Kentucky to buy Black Tie Affair for $7 million. During his racing career, the 1991 Horse of the Year and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner was owned by Sullivan and based in Chicago.
Sadly, Arlington’s backstretch no longer boasts the likes of Black Tie Affair and Unbridled, the 1990 Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner.
The renaissance initiated with the 1981 birth of the Million and intensified by the 1989 rebuilding of Arlington came to an end when riverboat casinos invaded the Chicago gambling market in the early ’90s. That coincided with a dramatic boom in Kentucky racing.
And the full-card simulcasts that were legalized in Illinois in 1995 have caused quality-conscious horseplayers to shop at tracks outside the state.
Meanwhile, there is a shortage of horses throughout the country. From a 1986 high of 51,296 the North American foal crop has fallen to fewer than 35,000 in 1995.
Arlington and the other Illinois tracks have become increasingly reliant on Illinois-bred horses. However, compounding a decline here that is even more pronounced than the national birthrate decrease, changes in the breeding program that were part of the 1995 statute are prompting some leading Illinois horse-producers to move their breeding stock to other states.
At the track, falling purses also are producing a backlash. Some of Arlington’s disgruntled horsemen are trying to pressure the track’s owner, Dick Duchossois. They are demanding that he pull the plug on the Million.
