Season of Dreams

By Scott Wells
President & General Manager

For me, a racetrack general manager who trained horses for many years, the first morning of a new racing season isn’t the first day of actual racing—it’s the first day we open the racetrack for training. That was at 6 0’clock this morning. What a beautiful morning, with temperatures in the 70s and a nice breeze blowing. And what a beautiful sight as the first thoroughbreds stepped onto the carefully groomed and watered dirt surface. We spend $1.4 million each year to make Remington Park’s track one of the safest in the country and this morning as the horses went by it sounded like they were galloping on a cloud.

193 horses arrived at Remington Park yesterday, with more than 1,200 more scheduled to arrive over the next few days. Over the next few months more than 3,000 different horses will race and train here—each one of them an extension of somebody’s dream. That’s what horse racing is. It’s a sport of dreams. We all dream of owning the next Secretariat, a horse so fast and famous he takes us to a world of riches and glamour. “Breed the best to the best and hope for the best” is the old saying. But there are so many steps in the process. Each year thousands of people around the world breed the best mare they own to the best stallion they can afford and the dream begins. It takes 11 months for that foal to be born and another two years before he or she is old enough to race.

Some of the horses I saw this morning were two-year-olds which have never raced yet. The owners, trainers, grooms and jockeys who work with these horses know all the Cinderella stories. A horse named John Henry sold for $1,100 and then $2,200 before the right trainer got him and unlocked the door to his amazing talents. Then he earned $7 million. A horse named Invasor was bought for next to nothing before going on to win $8 million and retiring to stud with a fee of $35,000 per mare. Multiply that by 150 mares and that’s another $5.25 million PER YEAR! Horse racing has more rags-to-riches stories than any other sport. Kings, queens, Arab sheiks and U.S. presidents have all had their horses beaten by people of modest means. Because now and then big dreams do come true for “little people.” And those horses don’t read the financial statements of their owners.

Our “Season of Dreams” started today when the horses hit the track. And in each of the 600 races we’ll conduct between August 19 and December 11, reality will be revealed, one race at a time.