Tension Mounts as Prairie Meadows Remains Closed

A week after Oaklawn Park completed its 57-day meeting, Lynn Chleborad worked approximately 10 horses on a chilly May 9 morning at the Hot Springs, Ark., track, where she has more winners than any other female trainer in history.

In the pre-COVID-19 world, Chleborad would be breezing horses in early May at Prairie Meadows in Altoona, Iowa. Now, the clock is ticking on Chleborad and a handful of other Prairie Meadows regulars who winter at Oaklawn, which will close for training May 23 and shutter its stable area the following day. Owing to the new virus, Prairie Meadows hasn't announced a date to accept horses, let alone begin live racing, after originally planning to launch its 84-day mixed meet May 1. The track has temporarily laid off 1,1300 employees because of the COVID-19 pandemic, retaining only 73 employees to oversee property maintenance during the shutdown.

"I have made phone calls and the stall people have called me from different places, Canterbury, Louisiana Downs … " Chleborad said in her barn office May 7 at Oaklawn. "I've talked to lots of different people. The owners are frantic. They're in a panic situation. A lot of them have had their horses up in training since December and January, pointing for the first of May at Prairie Meadows. The expenses are mounting. The idea of nowhere to go—they need to run the horses. They flat told me, some of them: 'If they don't run, I'm going to have to send the horses where they can run.'"

Prairie Meadows CEO Gary Palmer told the Des Moines Register he is hesitant to reopen the facility too soon.

“As long as these (positive COVID-19) numbers keep going up, it doesn’t make sense to me,” Palmer said. “My worst nightmare is reopening and then having to shut down all over again."

Chleborad said she plans to have the on-site maximum 42 horses at Prairie Meadows, including approximately 27 Iowa-breds. Her major client is prominent breeder Allen Poindexter, who normally sells his most promising runners at high-end yearling or 2-year-old sales. Poindexter is also heavily involved in the Iowa breeding program and campaigned, with Chleborad, multiple stakes winners American Sugar and Chanel's Legacy, the latter bred in Iowa. Chleborad trains two horses for Poindexter that were named 2019 champions by the Iowa Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association in Kauai (Horse of the Year and 3-year-old male) and Flat Out Speed (2-year-old filly). They each won three races last year at Prairie Meadows.

Kauai finished fourth and seventh in two tough allowance races at the 2020 Oaklawn meeting. Flat Out Speed, in her 3-year-old debut, finished sixth in an April 25 allowance race, her first career loss. Oaklawn's racing landscape changed dramatically this year, in part because of an influx of Southern California trainers from Day 1. The product became even more competitive during the final three weeks of the meeting after a shrinking national playing field (COVID-19) produced robust fields and entrants from the likes of Bob Baffert, Bill Mott, Todd Pletcher, Michael McCarthy, and Jack Sisterson in maiden special weights or allowance events.

"This was an unusual year for us," said Chleborad, who has 122 career victories at Oaklawn, including three stakes. "Here, most of the time, the real good horses leave the end of March when they go to Keeneland and go to Churchill. It leaves the horses that are maybe not quite the caliber of the California horses and the top, top horses in the world here. You tear them up to run to get a check. We've had a few injuries and things just haven't gone the way we wanted them to and it's been a hard year for lots of people here."

Chleborad was 1-for-45 at the meeting, with her 25-horse stable generating just $35,371 in purse earnings. The pedestrian Oaklawn meet, Chleborad said, makes running at Prairie Meadows imperative, particularly because of its lucrative purse structure for Iowa-breds. She bankrolled more than $1 million in purse earnings at the last two meets.

"I applied for the federal Paycheck Protection Program and if I wouldn't have received it, I'd be done," an emotional Chleborad said, referring to small business loans for COVID-19 relief. "I would be done."

Also in a holding pattern is jockey Alex Birzer, another Prairie Meadows fixture who has amassed 3,329 victories and almost $58 million in purse earnings in a near three-decade career. Birzer is a five-time riding champion at Prairie Meadows (roughly half his career victories have come there) and a 2019 inductee into it's Hall of Fame.

"I've been going to Iowa for the last 20-something years," said Birzer, long among Chleborad's go-to riders. "Really, this is kind of a shock. Where else would you go? My wife, she's training a few horses. The whole barn is all Iowa-breds. Where do you go with those? I've always been big on following my people. The next news, you start calling around and see where your people are going to go. I would just assume go to Iowa. That would be the best scenario."

Birzer said he was also hit hard financially this year at Oaklawn after winning only six races, adding the colony was "brutally tough" with the addition of former Southern California stalwarts Martin Garcia and Joe Talamo, who combined for 108 victories to finish second and third, respectively, in the standings.

"Personally, I didn't do quite as well as I have in the past," Birzer said. "When you rely on that … taxes are due before too much longer, bills are creeping up, and then my wife's horses have to eat."

Cody Ungles, Birzer's valet at Oaklawn and Prairie Meadows, said he's "nervous" about the immediate future because he's supporting a wife and 23-month-old daughter. Ungles also works as valet for Ramon Vazquez at Prairie Meadows and as an exercise rider for trainer Randy Morse at both tracks. Ungles normally has a month off before he begins galloping horses again before the Oaklawn meeting.

"It makes it tough when you've got a family," Ungles said. "The thing with everybody in a holding pattern, it puts my jobs in jeopardy, too. I don't know if my galloping job is going to go there or not. Do I need to look for another job that way? My jocks are put in a bad spot. Ramon and Birzer have been two of the top three riders the last six or seven years I've had them. I can look up and both have their tack at Lone Star tomorrow. I don't have a good backup plan right now. I'm looking at all the other options, but I don't have any good options right now. I can always go somewhere and gallop, but if I'm going somewhere at the last minute it's a matter of having to leave my wife and daughter here at home. If I go to someplace like Canterbury, I'm 14 hours away."

Trainer Kelly Von Hemel annually winters at Oaklawn but lives about 10 minutes from Prairie Meadows. Like Chleborad, Von Hemel points for the Prairie Meadows meet because his stable, projected at 42 this year, is heavy on Iowa-breds. Von Hemel's Iowa-bred star, Mywomanfromtokyo, has been training at Oaklawn in advance of her 2020 debut.

In addition to 11 horses at Oaklawn, Von Hemel said he has horses preparing for the Prairie Meadows meet on three farms near Oklahoma City, at Fonner Park in Nebraska, in Kentucky, and in Florida.

"I always leave here the next day after the meet's over," Von Hemel said. "This is such a different situation. Not running now, as great as Oaklawn was, your afternoons are filled with anxiety right now of just trying to get home. We're all doing that, as far as trying to get to the next place, hoping the next place runs. The problem is, with Prairie Meadows coming up late, I think I'm going to lose a few horses just because the people have gotten a little impatient. They weren't Iowa-breds, obviously, but to lose a few open horses hurts us a little bit. We don't have that many of them. Got to hurt a little bit."

Birzer called working horses for Chleborad in early May at Oaklawn, instead of Prairie Meadows, "very strange." Prairie Meadows was originally scheduled to run May 1-Sept. 26.

"I've made one trip to Iowa and the good news is everything's green up there," Birzer said. "It's never green. Always brown when we get up there. You've got to look forward to something. You've got to have some good news."