Ontario Stay-at-Home Order Further Delays Woodbine Meet

Woodbine, where racing is postponed due to a stay-at-home order for the province of Ontario, faces an even longer delay to the start of its 2021 Thoroughbred meet after the Ontario government announced April 16 an extension to the end of the order.

With the upcoming meet initially scheduled to begin April 17, owners and trainers based at the Toronto track face a looming crisis along with track management amid uncertainty over when racing will be permitted to resume.

Track officials are also concerned about the delay to the season, but about losing the track's horse population to the United States, where racing is underway at various tracks across the country as COVID-19 numbers there decline and more individuals get vaccinated. 

The stay-at-home order, which began April 8, is meant to curb rising COVID-19 cases and was extended from an end date of May 6 to May 20. It restricts some outdoor activities besides racing, although training remains authorized, with more than 250 horses recording published workouts Saturday at Woodbine. Toronto falls under Ontario's "grey zone," with the highest level of COVID-19 cases and, therefore, the strictest lockdown protocols.

"For me, it's starting to feel a little desperate," Woodbine CEO Jim Lawson said Saturday. "I've been talking to the right people, directly to senior officials, and as a result of those conversations, I've given the industry hope, but then nothing happens."

Woodbine conducted racing in 2020 without spectators, although the track was forced to end its abbreviated meet early due to Toronto entering the "grey zone." The meet had 96 race days due to starting late and finishing early, leaving 35 fewer race days and 305 fewer races than in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the start of the season from April 18 until June 6. It finished Nov. 22 instead of Dec. 13 as originally scheduled.

From March 28 to April 5 of this year, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario increased by 28.2%. In that same timeframe, the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care escalated by 25%.

"Case rates, hospitalizations, and ICU occupancy are increasing rapidly, threatening to overwhelm the health care system," read an April 7 release from the Office of the Premier.

"These variants have really taken off and taken hold in a dangerous way," Lawson said. "I have a lot of empathy with the difficult choices the government has had to make. I get how complex it is. They've got a limited number of ICU beds, spiking numbers, and their projections are showing a real crisis over the next few weeks unless something's done.

"But there have been a lot of inconsistencies (during the lockdown), and it's just a very difficult situation as it relates to racing. We are a very large industry in this province. Woodbine wagering and Woodbine Racetrack are the economic driver for that industry, which employs 25,000 people in this province alone."

Lawson said he sent an email Saturday to several cabinet ministers seeking a change in the "grey zone" language that would permit the track to conduct racing. He said racing does not present an increased risk of transmitting the virus.

"Our backstretch is full of people and horses in the morning, and it takes a significantly reduced number to conduct live racing in the afternoon," he said.

Unlike many tracks in the United States that have resumed racing, Woodbine had zero COVID-19 positives on its backstretch during the six-month span in which it conducted racing last year, Lawson said. During racing in November, one jockey tested positive for COVID-19 after contracting the virus outside the track. Lawson said a small number of backstretch workers have tested positive in the last few weeks since a new variant has emerged to their area. However, he said the positives are not considered an "outbreak," since there is no evidence transmission of the virus occurred on the backstretch.

"Given our record and given what's going on with this virus right now it's pretty clear that outdoor actives are not the source of the problem," Lawson said. "We have successfully operated outdoor actives without any outbreak."

Lawson said he was working with the government to host a pop-up vaccination clinic at Woodbine, but a vaccine shortage has brought those plans to a halt.

"As of a week ago I thought that was going to happen, but we don't have any vaccine," he said. "We came up with an operating plan that might have kept people safe and helped them, and at least in terms of Woodbine Thoroughbred, it would have solved the racing issue, if we had 90% of our backstretch vaccinated. But we can't get the vaccine."

Woodbine has been working closely with Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Officer of Health for the city of Toronto.

"She's very supportive of our health protocols," he said. "My goal this week is to sit down and say to the government, 'You've seen the facts, our health protocols are first class, we've gone over these with the likes of Dr. De Villa in Toronto. We understand you're in a difficult position, but please don't destroy this very important industry in this province.'"

Lawson said the track cannot afford to lose its equine population to the U.S., where owners may decide to send their horses to pursue purse money rather than continue to incur the daily expenses of training with no chance at recouping the investment. He said each day without racing represents an increasing economic hardship for the industry.

Five stakes had been planned at Woodbine from May 1-16. Its signature race, the Queen's Plate, is scheduled Aug. 22. 

"This latest move has spawned a mass exodus," Lawson said. "I've spent a lot of my life the last three days fielding calls from trainers, owners... I just got off the phone with a significant trainer who said, 'Jim, help me here, my livelihood depends on this and two of my major owners want to go to the United States.

"We could find ourselves in May or June, rather than stabling the 2,000 horses we expected, we could see that number dropped down to 700 or 800 horses. We had a record number of stall applications this year, and we turned horses away. We're renovating three barns right now to get our backside capacity over 2,000 horses. Right now we're at 1,400 but if we don't give these people hope that at the end of this lockdown we can start racing, we're going to do irreparable damage. The horses are going to leave; we won't get them back very quickly. It's going to do damage to Woodbine and this industry that will have a lasting impact. And it's frustrating because we're a big industry, and we employ a lot of people, with a very meaningful economic impact not only on Toronto but on rural Ontario.

"There also starts to become a horse welfare issue, because people need the purse money to look after the horses. That is a concern which certainly rears its head."

Mark Casse, a Hall of Fame trainer in both the U.S. and Canada, has led the standings at Woodbine 12 times. During peak season, he said 75 Canadian employees take care of his Woodbine string.

"We employ only Canadians in Canada, have for years," Casse said Saturday. "I can't remember the last time I had anybody but a Canadian working for us in Canada.

"Obviously (the delay of the meet) is hard on us; we've got a lot of owners that have invested a lot of money and have invested in Ontario-breds, and a big part of our racing stable is in Canada. But I feel bad for all of the Canadian horsemen and women. We got to leave and race in the wintertime; we're still running in various different places in the U.S., but (the people based at Woodbine) haven't had racing in six or seven months."

Casse has about 40 horses stabled at Woodbine, while he typically would have sent around an additional 60 for the meet.

"We are holding off a bit to see what's going on," he said. "I have stopped sending horses up there, and we've talked about moving the horses we have up there. It's expensive to be there and not run, but it's also expensive to move. I'm just waiting to see what's going to happen."

Casse pointed to the ongoing expense of training and caring for the horses that are in a holding pattern while racing remains postponed.

"It's not like some businesses where you can shut it down and cut the overhead," he said. "Horses have to be fed and taken care of, no different than if they're running or not running. So it's a huge expense.

"What I think is probably the most frustrating part about it is, we've had states like California and New York that have had lockdowns at various levels, but they still managed to run and do a great job and keep people safe."

Professional hockey has been permitted to continue in Ontario, albeit divisional play with the seven Canadian teams in the NHL only facing each other. Still, the conducting of the 56-game season inside arena walls, no matter how small the bubble, irks those who make their living on the outdoor sport of horse racing.

"If that isn't the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard—they can do hockey but they can't do horse racing?" Casse said. "And when we're allowed to train them, everything. That's just pure politics. The amount of people that are supported by the racing industry is humongous in Canada, I can tell you. It's a lot more than hockey."