During my years as a Tribune sports writer, I covered the Kentucky Derby 33 times and considered it to be one of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of my long career.
Before I joined the Tribune in 1968 and after my full-time employment ended in 2008, I watched the Derby on TV every year, even though I’ve never been a horseplayer and racing isn’t my favorite sport. Watching the post parade to the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home” on the first Saturday in May was a rite of spring.
But starting last year, I vowed never to watch another Kentucky Derby, either in person or on TV.
My boycott comes in response to the vital role the management team at Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) played in the Bears’ 2023 destruction of the world-renowned and tradition-rich Arlington International Racecourse, one of the precious gems of Chicago sports.
The rubble that remains is a monument to the greed of the people who run CDI and their disregard for the owners and trainers who raced their horses there and the fans and families who made trips to Arlington part of their summer sports and recreation menus.
CDI has tried to hide its motive in forcing the Bears to wipe Arlington off the map, but the obvious reason was to eradicate gambling competition for Rivers Casino, in which CDI holds a 62% interest and which is located in Des Plaines, only 12 miles from the site of the former track in Arlington Heights.
Then known as Arlington Park, the racetrack was built in 1927 and acquired by the late Dick Duchossois and three partners in 1983. In the aftermath of the fire that destroyed the clubhouse and grandstand in 1985, Duchossois bought out his partners in February 1986 and rebuilt Arlington in 1988. After Arlington reopened in 1989, Architectural Digest acclaimed it as “the world’s most beautiful racetrack.”
European horse owners and media who came for the Arlington Million and their counterparts in the U.S. joined in the chorus of praise.
New York sports writer Jenny Kellner told the whimsical tale of a horseplayer who’d gone to heaven and was taken on a tour by St. Peter, who asked, “Well, how do you like the place?”
“Oh, it’s nice,” the horseplayer answered. “But it sure ain’t Arlington.”
Duchossois shut down his palatial track in 1998-99 in a successful attempt to win substantial real estate tax concessions. He reopened in 2000, and that June he merged Arlington and CDI.
The merger made Duchossois Industries by far the biggest shareholder (25%) in the parent company. A string was attached that the share would increase to 31.8% if the litigation-snarled Rosemont casino opened within a few years and — as mandated by the legislature — funneled a portion of its adjusted gross revenue to the state’s racetracks, with Arlington receiving the biggest subsidy. Duchossois Industries also was awarded three seats on the CDI board of directors.
Duchossois predicted that joining with “the best-known brand in horse racing would greatly benefit Illinois racing.”
Instead, the merger ultimately produced irreparable damage to Illinois racing.
For nearly two decades CDI/Arlington joined with the other tracks and thoroughbred and harness horsemen’s organizations to lobby the state legislature for permission to conduct slot machine and table gaming at the track, converting it into a “racino.”
Similar to the Rosemont formula that never came to fruition, a 3% adjusted gross revenue deduction would be allocated for purses. This would significantly upgrade the quality of racing and make the product more attractive to sophisticated bettors in Illinois and in the simulcast marketplace, where races from all over the country are shown at out-of-state tracks and off-track betting locations. Similar racing formulas have proven to be very successful in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Starting in 2015 the Duchossois family began significantly reducing its holdings in CDI. In 2017 the sale of more stock and the departure of the family’s representatives on the board left the track entirely in the hands of corporate managers headed by CEO Bill Carstanjen.
An obvious proponent of Milton Friedman’s economic philosophy that the sole purpose of a corporation is to increase its profits, Carstanjen shifted CDI’s traditional emphasis on racing to a focus on casino gambling, and in 2018 Arlington’s parent company acquired its 62% interest in Rivers Casino.
The long push for casinos at Illinois racetracks finally succeeded in the spring of 2019, when the legislature passed and Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a massive gaming expansion bill.
But then CDI did a sudden and shocking about-face, announcing that Arlington wouldn’t become a racino. Carstanjen said the subsidy for racing purses made it “financially untenable.” He went on to say: “The long-term solution is not Arlington Park. That land will have a higher and better purpose for something else.”
When interrogated by Illinois Racing Board members concerning the financial windfall that closing Arlington would have on Rivers Casino’s revenue, a CDI representative said he wasn’t privy to any discussions to that effect.
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The 360-acre property was put up for sale in 2021, and racing was discontinued after that year’s April 30-Sept. 25 meeting.
The Bears bought Arlington for $197 million in 2023 after CDI spurned at least three offers from groups that sought to perpetuate racing. This wasn’t the first time the Bears contemplated moving to the racetrack property. In 1975 they announced plans to build an 80,000-capacity stadium that would open in 1977 northwest of the old Arlington and would coexist with the racetrack, but the deal with former track owner Gulf & Western fell through.
The consensus is that in addition to prohibiting gambling on the property, the new deal with the Bears included a tacit agreement not to conduct betting on races. Instead the football team planned a $5 billion development with an enclosed stadium, housing and entertainment.
But now the Bears have shifted their focus to building a replacement for Soldier Field on the Chicago lakefront. To reduce the enormous increase in real estate taxes that resulted from the cessation of racing at Arlington after the 2021 meeting, in May 2023 they began the since-completed demolition of the luxurious and historic track. (The team’s late chairman, Ed McCaskey, must have been rolling over in his grave because after Arlington reopened in 1989, he was a summertime fixture in a box seat in front of the press box.)
The destruction of Arlington gave CDI a “demolition derby double” — combining it with the 2015 destruction of another track in its gambling empire, Calder Race Course in suburban Miami.
CDI purchased Calder in 1999, and casino gambling came to the track in 2010 with the stipulation there be 40 days of racing. In 2014 the track was leased to the owner of Gulfstream Park. Even though CDI tore down the grandstand and clubhouse after the 2015 meeting, racing continued under the auspices of Gulfstream until the lease expired in 2020.
To perpetuate casino gambling, CDI persuaded regulators to substitute parimutuel betting at the jai alai fronton it had built on the premises for the rule that stipulated 40 days of betting on horses.
Jockey Miguel Mena rides Harmac, left, after they won the Bruce D. Memorial Stakes race during Arlington Million day on Aug. 12, 2017, at Arlington Park in Arlington Heights. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
While the cessation of racing at Calder had an adverse effect on the thoroughbred sport in Florida, the damage pales in comparison with that inflicted on both thoroughbred and harness racing in Illinois by the absence of Arlington.
It has left the dual-purpose Hawthorne Race Course as the only track in the Chicago metropolitan area. Since 2022 the thoroughbreds and harness horses have had to time-share, dividing the racing calendar. This year thoroughbred racing began on March 23 and will run through Oct. 13. The harness horses concluded a meeting that began Sept. 9 on Feb. 12, and they’re scheduled to return for an Oct. 19-Dec. 30 meeting.
Trying to undermine Hawthorne was a constant when CDI controlled Arlington. In 2012 its racetrack subsidiary Churchill Downs instituted a qualifying race system to determine the field for the Kentucky Derby. Conspicuous by its absence from the list was the most prestigious dirt race in Illinois, the Illinois Derby at Hawthorne. Making the omission more glaring was that 2002 Illinois Derby winner War Emblem went on to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
Included on the long list of current qualifiers are such dubious domestic preps as the Sunland Park Derby in a New Mexico city with a population of 18,032. There also are more than a few far-flung overseas qualifiers such as the UAE Derby in Dubai, the Fukuryu Stakes in Japan and the Cardinal Stakes in Great Britain. There has been only a trickle of qualifiers from overseas, and none has come close to finishing in the top three.
In stark contrast to CDI, NASCAR is trying to get a foothold in Chicago and Formula One is exploring the possibility of holding a race here. The women’s professional franchises, basketball’s Sky and soccer’s Red Stars, also are committed to becoming fixtures on the Chicago sports scene.
But CDI has turned away from the nation’s third-biggest sports market by excluding the Illinois Derby from the Kentucky Derby qualifier list and then committing a far more egregious offense by destroying Arlington.
In writing Arlington’s obituary, it must be emphasized that this beautiful track had one of the richest traditions in the racing world.
Jerry Bailey rides Cigar across the finish line July 13, 1996, in Arlington Heights to win the Arlington Citation Challenge. (AP Photo/Jane Gibson)
The great Secretariat made his first start after becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years when he came for an invitational race in 1973. In another invitational in 1996, Cigar equaled Citation’s modern-day record by winning his 16th consecutive race. Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown winner, made Arlington his summer home.
Dr. Fager set the world record for the mile there in 1968. John Henry won the inaugural Arlington Million; finished second to the first European winner, the English 3-year-old Tolomeo, in Million III; and won Million IV at the advanced racing age of 9. The list of racing immortals who won at the track goes on and on.
When the Arlington Million was inaugurated in 1981, it was the world’s richest race. The 1985 “Miracle Million” — run before a tent-city setting 26 days after the fire destroyed the grandstand and clubhouse — is one of the most memorable events in the annals of both Chicago sports and American racing.
The next summer Arlington again became a tent city for a 13-day meeting with 21 stakes races — including 13 major races — and total purses exceeding $5 million. With the exception of the Breeders’ Cup, no other series of races in the world at the time had that kind of financial foundation. Sixteen years later, Arlington was the host track for the 2002 Breeders’ Cup.
During Arlington’s last year of racing in 2021, CDI announced that the Duchossois family would be honored on Million Day and the Million was renamed “the Mister D Stakes.” Swept under the rug was the insulting reduction of its purse to $600,000 (from $1 million), guaranteeing the weakest field in the history of the multinational event.
It would be sort of like me telling you the wonderful annual banquet you used to host will be renamed in your honor this year — and instead of the usual champagne, caviar and filet mignon, I’m going to “make it better” by changing the menu to beer and brats.
Churchill masquerades as the champion of American racing when in reality it is perhaps the most destructive element in American racing. And in word and deed, Churchill has demonstrated it doesn’t care one bit about racing in Chicago.
So I’m asking Chicago sports fans to join my boycott of Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. Borrowing the words of CDI CEO Carstanjen, there are “higher and better purposes” you can devote your time to on the first Saturday in May.
Neil Milbert is a freelance writer who covered horse racing and other sports during his 40-year career with the Chicago Tribune.
