Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Arlington Park's owner rebuilt it after it burned, only to shut it down. Now the gleaming racetrack is bringing the Breeders' Cup to the Midwest.
Aug 21, 2002 | All the restroom innovations I've ever seen I've seen at airports: automatic flushing toilets, faucets, seat-protection devices. But the first automatic soap dispensers I ever saw were at a racetrack.
They were in a regular old public men's room, not in the luxury suites or anything, but just right there in the grandstand at Arlington Park, the thoroughbred track in Chicago's northern suburbs.
If you're the kind of person who likes the old-time atmosphere of the track, smoke-stained walls, sticky floors, old men in sweat-stained shirts chomping dead cigars and frowning over the Daily Racing Form trying to decide how to bet their retirement check, Arlington Park isn't for you. If the marble floors don't turn you off, the fact that you can practically eat off them might.
The track is having a big year. This is the 75th season of racing at Arlington. This year's Kentucky Derby winner, the Illinois horse War Emblem, broke his maiden at Arlington. Over the weekend it was the site of the 20th Arlington Million, which on its inaugural running in 1981 was the first thoroughbred race with a million-dollar purse. A million bucks was a lot of money in 1981, you see. The Million, a mile and a quarter turf race, remains the track's signature event, except this year, when it will play host to the Breeders' Cup, the first time that thoroughbred racing's richest day will ever be in the Midwest.
All this is most impressive when you consider that three years ago the track was dark for a second straight season, shuttered by its owner, railroad equipment magnate Richard Duchossois, in a bid to force a change in state gambling laws that he felt benefited casino gambling at the expense of the racing industry. That shutdown, in 1998, came 13 years after a fire had reduced the track to rubble. That fire came 25 days before the fifth running of the Million.
They ran the Million that year, in front of 35,651 fans in temporary bleachers and tents, with the rubble having been removed by round-the-clock work. The massive effort earned the track the Eclipse Award, racing's highest. It was the first track so awarded. The place was eventually rebuilt. The laws were eventually changed, and it was reopened. Dick Duchossois (it's pronounced the French way) and his people (who call him "Mr. D") know how to get things done.
"We're not that big philanthropists about it, but we had a responsibility," Duchossois, who is 81 and looks about 60, says about rebuilding the track following the 1985 fire. "This was an economic engine in the area. We owned it, and if it was gone, my family and I felt we had a moral obligation to replace it. And that we did."
Horse racing's prime attendance years had passed, so the new track was built smaller than the old one. The idea was to make it the nicest, best track in the country. "I don't like to be second to anything," Duchossois says.
"As far as the aesthetic beauty of a racetrack, as far as the modern-day racetrack goes, it's second to none," says Chris McCarron, the Hall of Fame jockey who retired this summer. "Other racetracks have a lot of historical mystique and charm. This track falls more into the category of your modern stadium." The dirt track itself is "great," McCarron says: "It's kind to horses. And as far as the turf, it's the best grass course in the country, bar none."
Dick Duchossois made his fortune after he returned from World War II, where he served under Gen. George S. Patton. A sign on his desk that explains his management philosophy -- "Don't expect what you don't inspect" -- comes from his war experience, when as a captain he sent a lieutenant to guard a gully that Duchossois hadn't looked at. Turned out to be the wrong gully, and the unit was overrun by Germans. "Was it his fault or was it my fault? I can't blame him; he was only a lieutenant. I was a captain at the time. I'm responsible."
After the war, Duchossois turned his father-in-law's railroad car repair business, Thrall Car Manufacturing, into Duchossois Industries, a billion-dollar company. He got into horse racing in the early '70s by investing in a few horses, then got involved with Arlington by accident. He was at the Kentucky Derby when he ran into two men who were running the track for Gulf & Western and trying to put together a group to buy it from the conglomerate. They asked Duchossois if he wanted to buy in.
"'If you have any trouble getting all the money together, I'd be interested, but a very small piece,'" he says he told them. "Well, it ended up I put up all the money for the track." The two Gulf & Western men and a friend were minor partners, eventually bought out by Duchossois. At first, he says, "I just looked at it as a straight investment. Then along came the end of July in 1985 and the track burned down. From then on I was in the racing business."
Duchossois had actually retired from his day job at Duchossois Industries 10 days before the fire. "And then I'm working harder than I ever worked." The race went off, going down in history as the Miracle Million, with an English horse named Teleprompter, a 14-1 shot, winning. Duchossois smiles at the memory.
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