Page 51 - COVER__October2020.indd

Over the course of the meet, Ruidoso ran 558 races — an average of 11.16 races per day. And of those, 367 were Quarter Horse races, with an average field size of 9.1. For the 191 Thoroughbred races run, field size averaged 7.94. “That mixed meet is vital to our success,” Jeff adds. “We couldn’t run this meet without the 200-odd Thoroughbred races.”
Since purses depend partially on racetracks’ casino income, they did experience cuts. But a purse tax agreement among the five New Mexico horse racing tracks and the two horsemen’s associations fed some additional dollars into
the stream. “The money remaining from the cancelled Sunland Park and Sun Ray Park meets, less some money that they held back for 2022, was shared equally between the next two tracks running, which were Ruidoso and The Downs
at Albuquerque, for our upcoming meets,”
Jeff says. “That was $3.2 million and that was hugely impactful for the success of the race meets because all of the track casinos were shut down.”
The Need To Move The Sale
When Ruidoso Sales Manager Lowell Neumeyer realized that holding the sale at Ruidoso was out of the question, he approached Dan Wall and Gary and Micah McKinney about holding the sale at the Lazy E in Guthrie, Oklahoma. “That was the only place I felt was safe to do it,” Lowell says. “Even though it cost a lot to move it there, they’ve had an event there every week since the coronavirus started and since they’re in the country, not in a town, I thought it was our best option.”
“The cost associated with moving the sale was astronomical to the Ruidoso Horse Sales,” Johnny says. “But the people who brought horses to the Lazy E reaped the benefits of it. We saved the horse market and we saved the income for the people who had horses consigned, and we took the hit.
“I’ve been in the livestock industry for all my life,” Johnny adds. “You have years that you do real well and you have years that are just devastating and we just have to get by those devastating years. That’s where we are now. But I think we did the right thing and I’m glad we did.”
“We had a very successful sale,” Jeff says.
Ending The Season
Throughout the meet, says Chicho, “we had no outbreaks; no one got sick. That’s pretty amazing. Backside workers wanted to race their horses, and of course we wanted them to. So, they maintained that strict environment.”
“The main thing is, the Quarter Horse racing industry is alive September 15 because Ruidoso Downs didn’t shut down,” Johnny says. “Everybody knows that the industry’s most important races are these three at Ruidoso and the three at Los Alamitos. If we gave that (Triple Crown) money back and owners just went and ran those horses wherever, where would the
Quarter Horse industry be today? What would be the market value of the horses we sold at the Lazy E? That was the key determining factor: We said we were going to have those races and we stayed good to our word. And it was very, very costly.”
“We spent tens of thousands of dollars in the casino floor installing plexiglass, buying another infrared camera, upgrading our ventilation filters and creating a more COVID-safe premises,
and we’re still not open,” Jeff says, “but we ran all of our 50 days on time and crowned an All American Futurity Champion.
“We also accomplished a new TV deal with a new TV partner, the Cowboy Channel,” Jeff says. “We got two 90-minute live programs on the
air from Ruidoso Downs: the Rainbow and All American Futurity days. Those are the first two of five live 90-minute broadcasts we’ll get including the 2021 Triple Crown.
“That’s a bright spot; that’s a great combination for us. People who enjoy the Cowboy Channel are our kind of people. They’ve told us so: We just started reviewing all our ratings and social media data metrics. We doubled our impressions on social media Labor Day weekend year over year. We had 4 million impressions on social media. And we had a lot of attention put on Ruidoso Downs that we don’t normally get as a result of our digital strategy.
It’s a testament to what Cowboy Channel and Ruidoso can do together as a brand.
“And finally, the only on-track event that
we conducted all summer long was the Ruidoso Handicapping Challenge.,” Jeff adds. “It was a $400 buy-in live-money wagering contest on track here at Ruidoso. The top two finishers earned seats in the $3 million national live handicapping challenge that happens in Vegas each year. We had 56 high-level horse players
bet two races from Del Mar, two from Saratoga and two from Ruidoso, and we got a lot of national exposure from that. We’ll send those two top players to Las Vegas to compete for the $1 million prize as the nation’s top handicapper.
“That’s not something Ruidoso had participated in before and it helped put us on the national map among big-time horse players,” he adds. “So that’s the inaugural event of what we think will become an annual event. I’m really pleased with that.
“Working with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and with high-level horse players informs us locally as to how to develop our product and helps us nationally: When those guys go home, they won’t think twice about playing Ruidoso on their ADWs or their OTBs.”
“At the end of the day,” Chicho says, “you do the best you can and pray to God everything works out. The team at Ruidoso did a very good job. They all did everything they said they’d do. I think we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.”
SPEEDHORSE October 2020 49