2002 - Harness Tracks of America, Inc.

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA
Executive Newsletter
A daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyond
Stanley F. Bergstein, Editor
WEG AND THE BIG VALBOWSKI
Vince McMahon has discovered Canada, and his
World Wrestling Entertainment, once known as the
World Wrestling Federation, is pushing hard to
establish a major base there. Ten of wrestling’s
superstars will congregate at Woodbine Racetrack
this weekend, and will sign autographs and
raise money for Variety, the Children’s Charity.
The ten will meet and mingle with the crowd at the
track’s main entrance, then repair to a fund-raising
luncheon in Woodbine’s newest attraction, its
eastside V.I.P. Tent, where the hulks will regale
invited guests with stories of their conquests. In
the second race, a seven furlong maiden allowance
event for 3- and 4-year-olds, the horses will be renamed
for the grapplers, but the betting will be
real. At a drawing yesterday, the field was matched
with the grapplers in a special draw presided over
by WWE Superstar Trish Stratus, and going
postward Saturday will be Stacy Keibler, Test,
Christian, The Big Valbowski, Mark Henry, Randy
Orton, Jazz, Rhyno, Scotty 2 Hotty and Spike
Dudley. Woodbine and its co-sponsor of the tag
team promotion, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming
Corporation, hope to raise $175,000 for the kids’
charity. Vince McMahon hopes to strengthen
WWE’s ties with Canadian federal and provincial
governments in an effort to see if “taxes, synergies,
government partnerships and advertising and
tourism campaigns” can be merged for mutual benefit.
A NEW STAR IN THE MAKING?
A quarter of a century ago or so, a United States
Trotting Association publicist wrote a story about
an orgy of employees on the backstretch orchard
of the Little Brown Jug, where revelry used to run
rampant after the classic race for 3-year-old
pacers. The story ran big in a Sunday
edition of the Columbus Dispatch, and it
got the publicist fired.
July 18, 2002
He struggled to New York, found work with
Newsweek, then People, then became editor of US,
and now is executive editor of Sports Illustrated.
Today comes word that the board members of the
Delaware County Agricultural Society have approved
liquor and beer sales, under strict supervision,
for this year’s Jug and Jugette. We’ll be there,
on the lookout for a new scribe who may write about
events, get fired for doing it, and find that there is
life after USTA.
CAMPBELL REFLECTS ON 9,000
Whether it happened Saturday night, as Standardbred
Canada claims, or Tuesday night, as the
Meadowlands claims, John Campbell now is past
9,000 winning drives and counting. With some $206
million in the till from horses he has driven, harness
racing’s Mr. Everything says 9,000 is okay,
but he doesn’t dwell on numbers. He was thrilled,
however, that “the people out front and all the way
back to the paddock were very enthusiastic in their
congratulations. For a Tuesday night crowd, that’s
more the hard-core fans and the gamblers, so I
felt good about that.” Right now, however,
Campbell says he doesn’t set goals or even think
about career highlights. “I’m sure I will when I
slow down and look back,” he said, “but right now
I’m in the present tense and looking to the future.”
COLONIAL GETS EXTRA DAYS
The Virginia Racing Commission has given tentative
approval to an expanded harness racing meet
for Colonial Downs this fall. The track was scheduled
to race 17 days, but when John Holland, who
held a meeting at his Oak Ridge Estates last year,
gave up the 14 days he was allocated this year,
Colonial said it would pick some of them up and
race 24 dates, Saturdays through Tuesdays, from
Oct. 5 until Nov. 12. The commission voted unanimously
to grant preliminary approval.