by Dean A. Hoffman

Dean Hoffman

Columbus, OH — How can you not love a state where the NBA team is called the Pacers?

Yet professional basketball came to Indiana long before pari-mutuel harness racing did.

Fifteen years ago, I remember tromping through a field near Anderson, Indiana, a field that local officials said would become a racetrack one day. And indeed it did. It became Hoosier Park.

In 2002, I remember pulling off the I-74 expressway near Shelbyville, Indiana and watching the construction of what become Indiana Downs.

Soon purses at Hoosier Park and Indiana Downs will be augmented by revenues from slots at the tracks and you can be assured that the breeding and racing scene in the Hoosier State will grow and prosper. What marvelous growth in just 15 years.

Hoosier Park opens on April 5 for another season of racing.

It always seemed ironic to me that Indiana, a hotbed of harness racing, had only fair racing until Hoosier Park opened. While pari-mutuel tracks boomed in neighboring states after World War II, Indiana wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, racing only at the fairs. It’s all going to change now.

Contrast that to the plight of Ohio, Indiana’s neighbor to the east. Without slots or a governor that recognizes the importance of horses in the state’s agriculture mix, Ohio has been languishing. Still, the doom is clearly overstated as Ohio’s four pari-mutuel tracks are still providing plentiful racing opportunities. And some horsemen have said that larger purses don’t mean much if you can only get a horse raced once every three weeks.

In the Hoosier State, I applaud the efforts of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission to keep the sport on the straight and narrow path. It sets the pace on integrity issues. That certainly helps when legislative support is needed. No elected official wants to support something that isn’t perceived as being on the up-and-up.

From what I hear, stallion bookings are up in Indiana. I suspect breeders that patronized stallions in Illinois and other adjacent states are now looking to Indiana for the future. There has been an influx of good stallions in recent years. No surprise there.

Covering the racing scene through good times and bad in Indiana has been the Hoosier Horse Review, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2008. Keep in mind that the first half of its life was spent before pari-mutuels ever reached Indiana.

The monthly publication is now owned by Tom Crouch, a Hoosier native who started Kentuckiana Farms, and editor Tim Konkle. Like everything else in Indiana racing, the magazine is about to change.

“Ken Heineken will be doing some design changes for the magazine as well as doing ads for our advertisers,” says Konkle. “James Platz will be writing and also designing our Web page. Mike Brown, who worked hard with horsemen to get slots approved, will write, too.”

These changes resulted from the fact that Konkle has taken a full-time job at Hoosier Park. He also operates the Indiana Standardbred Sales Company. He realizes that at times he was spread too thin and the magazine didn’t get the attention it needed. Having broader resources will help.

Konkle knows all too well how much time it takes to put out a publication and marvels at the tenacity of the publication’s founder, Kathryn Bonham.

“Her family owned The Horseman magazine many years ago when it was published in Indianapolis,” Konkle points out.

Indiana horsemen can truly be proud of how much things have changed in their state in the last 15 years. They maintained their enthusiasm despite having only fair racing for many decades, and now it’s their time to shine.