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As Monmouth Park prepares to open, and industry teeters on the brink

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Steve Edelson, @steveedelsonAPP

http://www.app.com/story/sports/2015/05/04/new-jersey-racing-monmou...

1:42 p.m. EDT May 4, 2015

An overwhelming sense of pride doesn't begin to capture the feelings Jeanne Vuyosevich and her husband,
Kenny, have for Sunset Meadow Farm in Farmingdale, the place they've made their own over the past 30 years
off the sweat of their brow, the reputation they've built and the relationships they've forged within the
thoroughbred racing industry.
So while everyone from politicians, bean counters and gamblers, to lawyers, captains of industry and
multinational corporations now hedging their bets on best-case scenarios for the future, it's all a bit more
(Photo: TANAY BREEN/STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHER)

personal for folks like Vuyosevich, caught in the never-ending tug-of-war about how to save Monmouth Park,
the centerpiece of the industry in the state.

ASBURY PARK PRESS

(http://www.app.com/story/sports/2015/05/03/bob-baffert-american-pharoah-monmouth-park-haskell/26835295/)
To these people, it's about their livelihood. A way of life they've chosen that's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the face of factors far beyond
their control, as the trickle down effect of a racing industry withering on the vine in the face of daunting competition to from neighboring states, both on the
track and in the breeding shed, threatens the very existence of the New Jersey racing industry.
"Hopefully they do good this year because it's caused a death knell of the farms in this area,'' said Vuyosevich, who also trains several of her horses at
Monmouth. "Breeding is down to nonexistent and people aren't laying horses up like they used to.
"I foal mares for a living. That's what pays for my farm. That and layup work. I have a lot of mares that come from Kentucky and Florida to foal here so
they can have Jersey breds and nobody came in this year because they're worried about the Jersey bred program. So we're hoping, we're keeping our
fingers crossed, and being that we make our entire living at Monmouth Park. My husband Kenny works at Monmouth, he's with the laborers. It's a
hardship when they don't do well because we're not having the revenue coming in like we used to.''

ASBURY PARK PRESS

(http://www.app.com/story/sports/2015/03/02/monmouth-park-ampitheater/24258193/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=)
That's how important Monmouth Park's 58-day meet, which opens on Saturday, is for the beleaguered industry, now officially in survival mode.
Vuyosevich has heard all the grand plans, from alternative revenues from casino gaming outside Atlantic City and sports wagering, to account wagering
and off-track gambling parlors and on-site concert venues. But so far it's been little more than backroom deals and talk, which doesn't add up to much
when you're trying to make ends meet at the end of the month.

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As Monmouth Park prepares to open, and industry teeters on the brink

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Jeanne Vuyosevich, owner of Sunset Meadow Farm, bathes Honorable Love, a thoroughbred filly who will race at Monmouth Park this year, at her farm in
Farmingdale, (Photo: TANAYA BREEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

"The lack of days hurts a lot of the people breeding,'' she said. "If you have a Jersey bred and you can only get in three races the whole meet it doesn't
pay and that was the problem we were having last year. A lot of people would enter a race and that race wouldn't come back for 25 days or 30 days. You
can't keep a horse running like that. It was kind of scarey.''
As the president of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, the operator of Monmouth Park, John Forbes finds himself walking a daily
tightrope between the hope of a promising future, clinging to the fact a decision on sports wagering in the state could be made by next month in the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals, and that an expansion of casino gaming outside Atlantic City could be on a ballot next November, and the daily reality that his
members are struggling to survive.
"I feel very positive about New Jersey racing, and part of that is that we're still here,'' he said. "We're not even supposed to be here. Two or three years
ago we were handed what I thought was close to a death sentence. When we no longer had a casino supplement, not state assistance, and Monmouth
was losing money.
"Our breeders in New Jersey are in dire straights, If we don't develop some alternative revenue source then all the horse farms will be gone. And the only
things that's keeping them alive is the fact that we have racing in New Jersey at Monmouth Park. If you envision no racing at Monmouth then that's the
end of everything. The breeders at this point are really under siege from the resurgence from states with alternative revenue from gambling casinos tied
to race tracks. The breeding industry in Pennsylvania was almost nonexistent and now is flourishing.''
The reality check is laid out in great detail by the 2014 Rutgers study "State of the New Jersey Horse Racing Industry: Post-Report of the Governor's
Advisory Commission on New Jersey Gaming, Sports and Entertainment," authored by Karyn Malinowski, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Equine Science
Center Paul D. Gottlieb, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
In 2013, New Jersey had 76 racing dates for thoroughbreds, $22,726,123 in purse money, or an average of $299,027 per day. By comparison,
Pennsylvania had 506 racing days between three different tracks, including Parx in nearby Bensalem, Pa., running for total price money of $110,037,249,
or an average of $217,464 per day.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Flush with racino dollars, with casinos tied to Pennsylvania's race tracks in a symbiotic relationship that has helped both industries flourish, the
Pennsylvania breeding program is among the strongest in the nation right now.
In 2013, Pennsylvania breeders had $10,465,072 in awards money, along with bonuses totaling $6,774,971 for racing in open company and another
$11,123,000 available for races restricted to state-bred horses.
By comparison, New Jersey had just $1,914,097 in breeders awards, $546,144 for open company bonuses and $4,673,500 for state-bred restricted
races.
Fantasy Lane Stable, a partnership with more than 500 investors under the guidance of general partner Bob Hutt, used to call New Jersey and Monmouth

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As Monmouth Park prepares to open, and industry teeters on the brink

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Park home, with their colt UptownCharlyBrown running in the 2010 Belmont Stakes. But now they've moved their entire racing and breeding operation to
Pennsylvania.
Buy Photo

Bayern, ridden by Martin Garcia, crosses the finish line to win the $1-million William Hill Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park last summer. (Photo: File photo)

"No. 1, you cannot survive in New Jersey,'' Hutt said. "Pennsylvania has the best state-bred program of any state in the U.S. For example, we run a horse
in open company, let's say a maiden special weight with a purse is $45,000, you're running for 40 percent more than the stated purses. You're running for
$70,000. That's like an open stakes race. If you have a $10,000 claimer and you're running in open company you're running for a purse of about $30,000.
That's just on the race track. As far as broodmares, if you breed in Pennsylvania to a Pennsylavnia stallion, you get 30 percent additional on top of that.
UptownCharlyBrown is a Pennsylvania stallion. We're getting 30 percent more plus any time a horse is 1-2-3 for Chary, I get 10 percent. For example, I'm
getting more than 100 percent of the purse. If the purse is $50,000, I'm getting like $55,000 back (to win) or $60,000. There's no state in the country that
can compete with that.''
How long can New Jersey commute the death sentence?
The numbers are downright daunting.
According to Dennis Drazin, adviser to the NJTHA, the venerable oval has $26 million budgeted for purses over 58 racing days this summer, or an
average of $448,275 daily. Given the realities of the 2014 meet, however, those numbers seem unrealistic.
In 57 racing day at Monmouth Park last summer, some $21,531,538 in purses were distributed, an average of $377,746 per racing day. Through the first
21 days of the meet, the average was $415,938, But following an Aug. 7 announcement that purses would be decreased by 10 percent for the final 36
days of the meet, when purses are normally lowered to begin with after the running of the $1-million William Hill Haskell Invitational, those daily totals
plummeted to $292,326, with an original 14-day turf meet at the Meadowlands in September reduced to just eight days due to weather and track
conditions.
Drazin indicated that he expects the final numbers on 2014 to show the track broke even or made a slight profit, after losing between $4 and $5 million in
2013. Part of that can be attributed to cutbacks on projects throughout the facility. But the reduction in Meadowlands racing days and purse cuts at
Monmouth tightened their belt by around $1.5 million.
But how much more cutting can the industry survive.
When the Hanson Report recommended in 2010 that the state racing industry much become self sufficient, the new reality, minus state aid and subsidies
from Atlantic City casinos to supplement purses, has become increasingly challenging.
"We are trying to stay in it because we love it and it's our passion for animals and it's a lifestyle,'' Vuyosevich said. "Unfortunately it's getting harder to pay
the bills because the lifestyle's not what it was. But hope's eternal in the racing industry. You run a terrible race and you're like your going to get rid of the
horse and he damn well comes out the next race and wins the damn thing, so now you're hooked again. Or when you foal that next baby and you can't
wait to see what it's going to do. So that's what kind of keeps us all in it.''

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As Monmouth Park prepares to open, and industry teeters on the brink

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Added Forbes: "You got to Monmouth Park and you meet so many people now who say, 'I went here with my father, or my father and my grandfather.'
And that's the kind of thing I think racing needs to embrace in this age of simulcast and internet and the days of the super trainer. Go back to the days
when I was there with my dad and we were playing the horses and spending time together.''
And over the course of the next few months, we'll all have a better idea of how realistic that idealistic vision of the sport's future is.
Staff writer Stephen Edelson is an Asbury Park Press columnist: sedelson@gannettnj.com; Twitter: @SteveEdelsonAPP
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