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“He loved horse racing. He wanted to be a part; it was in his blood.”
in Casper. Counties had built these facilities in the ’80s and they’d been in mothballs for 19 years, so in late August 2011, we ran four race dates at Sweetwater Downs, which allowed us to get our permits for simulcasting.
“When we brought back simulcasting, it was only at about 60 percent of what it was previously,” he continues. “So, in trying to figure out how we could bring new revenues into the industry, we looked at Kentucky, which had passed historic horse racing in 2010.”
By 2013, he’d helped introduce and promote a historic horse racing bill. “Anybody and everybody told me it didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting passed,” he says, “but the overwhelming consensus in the Wyoming legislature was that they wanted to help horse racing get back up on its feet.”
– Mike Joyce
Since then, another operator has purchased Wyoming Downs and Eugene’s group has built their race days from four in 2011 to two operators with 32 days of live horse racing. They’ve also grown the Wyoming-Bred Program from around $30,000 in 2010 to $3.2 million this year. “That has led a number of people from neighboring states, especially Utah, to purchase properties in Wyoming and ship their broodmares here to participate,” he says. “In the 1990s, less than 10 percent of our races were Wyoming-bred horses, and now it’s 30 percent and climbing.
“We’ve got a bunch of trainers who are trying to make a go of it, running with us
all summer and also buying Wyoming-bred horses. It’s been a winning bet for Wyoming. We just finished an economic impact study and
if I remember, in 1990 Wyoming Downs had a $15 million impact; in 2018 it was over $62 million. So, we’ve come back from the dead and we’re running as fast as we can.”
“With his idea and his ‘forcive’ personality, Eugene is the only one who could have pulled this off,” says Mike. “It took a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of convincing, but he had a vision that he really believed in and he got everyone to come on board. I don’t know anyone else who had the connections he did, who had the perseverance that he did, and who had the eternal optimism and the personality to pull it off. His personality is really his strength. He’s extroverted, he’s very well spoken, he’s got a lot of integrity and his word is gold. He’s a very engaging and magnetic person and he can charm anybody.”
SPEEDHORSE April 2020 91
Eugene with his wife, Karen and dog, Pete backcountry skiing
in the Tetons