With Horse Racing New Brunswick at the reins, the stakes season in the eastern province is producing some positive feedback for industry stakeholders

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On Canada Day, Fredericton Raceway hosted its second card of Atlantic Sires Stakes, which produced a handle comparable to last year’s July 1st program.

“I’m told that there was a good crowd there and that the wager was pretty good,” said Ross Galbraith, a Standardbred Canada Director for New Brunswick and board member of Horse Racing New Brunswick. “Down here, I think they were averaging about $2,000 bet on each race, which is pretty good. They had a double card, which included 17 races, and they did very good from that perspective so that tells me there was a lot of people there and importantly, they were betting on the races.”

This year’s handle was $33,655 with nine stake events out of 17 races, while $34,861 was bet on the day last year, which included eight stakes and 17 races.

The program also showcased a retired free for all competitor and crowd pleaser, Familiar Face, leading the post parade for the 54th edition of the Walter Dale Memorial Invitational Pace.

“Jamie [Hachey, President of HRNB] had told me last night that it just showed that these standardbreds are appreciated and well cared for in retirement. He remarked to me that a lot of folks in the crowd really liked to see that.

“We’re going to be offering some Atlantic Sires events at Connell Park, Woodstock for the first time in a long while this year,” added Galbraith. “We’re really looking forward to all the trotting events. I think it will be really well received in that kind of a rural setting. It really goes back to the roots of harness racing and I’m sure that’s going to be a very successful event so really the stakes season is just getting underway and we’re looking forward to what it has to hold for us.”

As far as the breeding industry goes in New Brunswick, Galbraith says at the present time some work still needs to be done in that area as some breeders have moved stallions out of province due to previous uncertainties within the industry.

“We hope as we move forward we’ll see some growth in the breeding industry in this province. It’s very important to us obviously to stimulate that part of it and as we go forward I’m hopeful that people will invest in broodmares and also stand some stallions here in this province.”

Galbraith, who has been apart of the not-for-profit Horse Racing New Brunswick from the beginning of its development as the new administrator of racing in the province, says the vision for the organization is slowly coming to fruition.

“I think that we did an enormous amount of work in the fall to structure the organization and get it off the ground and since that time we’ve had a few growing pains, which is normal in a new organization. They’ve been really related to trying to work at some of the details around the racetracks like creating the leases for the racetracks and getting racing going. We really appreciate the patience that horse people have shown us and also the support that they’ve given us as we’ve worked through some of those issues and we’re very optimistic about the future.

“I think the biggest challenge we face right now is in infrastructure. In particularly in Saint John and in our ability to offer simulcast wagering in other locations and deploy the gaming devices, which the government has made available to us. We’re working through those things and I think that it will get to where want it to be.”

Last fall, the government allocated 150 video lottery terminals to the HRNB, but a new gaming policy passed in the province presented the organization with some problems, putting certain requirements on the types of facilities where video lottery terminals could be deployed.

“We weren’t able to deploy them like we had wanted to,” explained Galbraith. “We have since worked with government and have come up with an alternative where the government will guarantee that we get at least a million dollars revenue from those. So what it means is, if we are able to deploy half of those machines and they’ve generated $600,000 they will prop it up to a million. If we get them all deployed and they are earning more than a million then that’s great, that’s for industry.

Galbraith says the agreement was reached this past month in June after being approved by the legislature.

“That was important for us because until we could get some of that revenue we really had to put a lot of our plans on hold. So we’ve had some challenges there from a resource perspective, but now that we’ve dealt with some of those things I think it allows us to move forward. It’s going to be slow. It’s growing in an evolutionary way not revolutionary. We don’t have buckets and buckets of money so I think we need to be wise about the way that we do things. We need to be smart and just try to grow it as we can. For some folks that won’t be fast enough, but it’s important for us to try to be sustainable and manage things in a prudent way and that’s what I see going on right now.”