The walking death of pari-mutuel racing in Tennessee, Part 2
by Frank Cotolo
Part 1 is here.
Why no pari-mutuel racing? There was no one to answer in the country music circle. What about the Tennessee walker? An entire breed of standardbreds thick in blood for racing wandered America’s rectangular state for what? Strolls? Pets? The nature of the beast was to use the “unique four-beat running-walk and flashy movement” it inherited from its trotting sire and dam to challenge others in the breed for speed and endurance and keep the bloodline flowing and prospering. By racing instead of walking.
In the late ‘80s the late, great standardbred journalist/novelist Phil Pines wrote: “There must be close to four dozen kinds of horse breeds in this country, each with their own breed registry associations. Most of them originated in places other than the U.S. and most of them are of the light variety, meaning they are of those big, sturdy guys that pull beer wagons… Some horse can be located immediately when you hear their names, the Missouri fox trotting horse and the Cleveland bay. If you were to count ‘em all you’d discover 18,000 or so standardbreds registered in the U.S. since 1879.
“From almost the very start there have been those who were not satisfied with the term ‘standardbred.’ Too common, they said. Lacks the kind of reference that should set the breed apart from all others. Not a class name.”
Pines’ history included suggestions to rename the breed included calling it a thoroughbred trotting horse or simply a high standard. The latter was rejected because some thought it was a “lofty title, explaining its meaning was obvious and that it would keep the trotter in his little world of prominence.”
Circa 1988 the Tennessee walker standardbred breed’s pari-mutuel racing future was at a stand-still. Even as the past few decades showed hope that new racetracks could surface — as the legalization of gambling sprouted across the nation through state lotteries — the Volunteer State kept its standardbred walking.
The Tennessee country music bloodlines were prolific and productive and profitable in the late 1980s. I know because I was in the thick of the country music boom in ’88. I was running the radio network during TNNR’s Wolfman Jack Show on projects for the existing TNN cable TV channel. I spent a great deal of time with new and veteran country music personalities as well as integral members of the state’s entertainment ruling class. As I connected with reliable sources, I gained access to some obvious and hidden information about the ban of pari-mutuel racing in the Volunteer State.
One rare off day from working at the station found Natasha and I going on a tourist-type stroll through Tennessee countryside towns and villages where small shops sold souvenirs and household trinkets and clothing and historic-based knickknacks. Natasha enjoyed exploring such territory outside of San Diego but I was bored in no time but for an item in a small novelty mart which I bought.
It was a small mass of wrought iron in the shape of a trotter and its driver in a sulky. I wasted no time to pick it up and bring it to the sales counter.
“Excuse me,” I said, “Is this the only horse racing item you have in the store?”
“You found that here?” the lady said.
“Yes. Up on a shelf against the wall.”
“How d’ya like that? I guess it’s the only one. Is that horse racing?”
“Yes. I think it is a Tennessee walker trotting. You know harness racing?”
“Don’t know much about any horses racing but if you found that on our shelf then it is for sale. But I don’t know of any other racing horse items we’d have.”
“I will take it. How much?”
“I’ll have to ask the manager. Don’t think it’s going to set you back any, though.”
I offered a $20 price and she said okay; probably thinking me crazy for paying that much for a dusty red statue of a man in a cart guiding a racehorse.
“Wow,” Nastasha said when I showed her. “Maybe it’s considered a paperweight.”
“Good call. All I know is it has no value to the locals.”
I brought it with me to one of our broadcast studios and showed it to a few local disc jockeys and personnel. A veteran radio technician said his grandfather had a similar statue. A younger co-worker said she had an old relative that owned some race horses but “never saw one raced from a cart.”
Calling it a cart was a dead giveaway that the term harness racing was foreign in those parts. But it was enough evidence for me to begin a deeper dive into why horses did not race in a state that bred horses with Hambletonian blood. And why were there no signs of thoroughbreds? There were horse farms in the state. And Nashville was only 200 miles from Kentucky, the mecca of equine breeding? Lexington, KY, home of The Red Mile and Kentucky Downs harness tracks, was a mere 106 miles away. A three-hour drive at best.
