COLUMN: Quit taking stuff away

     Stuff keeps getting taken away from me. Some of my favorite stuff.

     The most well-publicized example is Arlington International Racecourse, the beautiful horse racing facility in Arlington Heights, Ill. that was previously owned by Churchill Downs, Inc.

     CDI recently agreed to sell the sprawling, way-too-valuable property to the Chicago Bears, presumably for a new Bears’ stadium.

     Naturally, every news article you can find about this talks about the Bears, how it will affect the Bears, whether the Bears will be able to break their City of Chicago lease, what kind of stadium the Bears will build, etc.

     I couldn’t give two hoots whether the Bears play home games in Chicago, Arlington Heights, Rockford or Peoria. I do care, and am both saddened and angered, that Arlington International has quit running horse races, likely for good.

     Meanwhile, closer to home, the attacks on greyhound racing by self-important activist groups continues. Tracks all over the country have ceased live greyhound racing in recent years. Currently, only Iowa, Arkansas and West Virginia continue to offer it.

     News came out a couple of months ago that because of the resulting shortage of racing greyhounds, as breeders get out of the business in droves, the Iowa Greyhound Park in Dubuque will stop racing after next season.

     IGP has scheduled a shortened racing season in 2022, April 16 to May 15, before ceasing the tradition that began in 1985, for good.

     The Southland Casino Racing track in Arkansas will also close after 2022, leaving West Virginia as the only state still conducting live greyhound racing. It won’t be long until those shameless activists – whose primary purpose in life is to put people out of work in order to raise their profile – converge on the Mountain State to try to tell those people how to live.

     Meanwhile, the dominoes are about to knock over off-track betting opportunities as well. In Dubuque, the license to simulcast races from across the country, I’m told, ends when live racing ends, May 15, 2022.

     That will be followed by the Wild Rose Casino in Clinton, which has a separate racebook. That license expires Dec. 31, 2022.

     When I moved to small-town Iowa from the Twin Cities suburbs 23 years ago, I quickly learned that I could still find those things I am most interested in. I just had to look a little harder and travel a little farther.

     That challenge has intensified in recent months.

     Thankfully, Prairie Meadows still offers live horse racing and simulcasting. Prairie, by the way, got a boost in notoriety when Knicks Go, a horse who won Prairie’s Cornhusker Handicap in July, went on to win the richest race in America, the Breeders Cup Classic, last month.

     There is Iowa harness racing, which still runs a robust schedule throughout the summer, and was even able to run a race program at the Great Jones County Fair this year (!), ending a five-year streak of cancelled races.

     In September, I traveled to one of Iowa harness racing’s most frequent stops, What Cheer, for the first time, and look forward to doing that again next year.

     Maybe my best source of hope is the State of Nebraska, which recently passed a law allowing casinos to be built at its horse tracks.

     As a result, the four current Nebraska tracks, and prospective builders of new tracks, are currently falling over one another trying to attain casino licenses, likely ensuring the future of racing there for the rest of my life.

     Racing fans do have the at-home option, TVG, which is legal to Iowa residents and allows you to wager on horse races from across the country, online.

     But it’s not the same as being there live. It’s not even the same as hanging out at a simulcasting (racebook) facility.

     They’ll probably keep taking stuff away. And I’ll keep looking.