Windsor Raceway Closes Forever, Today

By Kevin McQuaid Jr.

Friday August 31st, 2012

Posted at 10:30am

Its the end of an era in Windsor today, as Windsor Raceway — which opened its doors on October 25th 1965 — shuts down its operations.

Windsor Raceway has a storied history. For the first twenty-nine years of its operation, live harness racing was contested during the six month season of October through April only, but in 1995 Windsor Raceway held its first season of year round live racing.

In the 1990′s came simulcasting giving ability for raceway patrons to bet on races being held at other racetracks.

In January of 1999, Windsor Raceway was the first racetrack in Ontario to install slot machine, which lead to boosted purses and quality of racing generating revenue of 69 million in its first years of operation, and helped sustain the raceway for more than a decade.

March 14th of this year was the beginning of the end for the raceway when the Ontario Government announced that slots would be pulled from the track on April 30th. Declining revenue was the main reason. 150 full-time and 60 part-time staff lost their jobs.

On May 4th, Windsor Raceway announced that they would close all horse racing operations to the financially troubled facility on August 31st. The Raceway said that despite OLG reports, there is no arrangement in place to facilitate any continued horse racing at the raceway.

On August 15th the raceway sent a letter to the racing Commission requesting to end its license. The Commission met with management of Windsor Raceway to discuss issues related to the request and set an end date.

Windsor Raceway’s license will be cancelled as of 11:59pm tonight. There is no indication what will happen next to the building or property.

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Anonymous

Let’s look at this logically for a second. The horse racing industry has been dying for quite sometime. This was once a popular way to gamble before the advent of casinos. Negative news stories about this industry (Doping of horses, race fixing, etc…) has NOT helped. The decision to close the slots was not made because the place was making money worth keeping it open. And heres a newsflash, the raceway slots were long time plagued with the stigma of having HORRIBLE payouts…..trust me….THAT”S why people stopped going (Especially the Americans). And anytime I had ever been there (less and less over time), it proved just that. Not only that, anytime I was ever in there the last year it was open, there was never anyone in there. Even on the weekends. It was SAD. As far as the horesmen are concerned, horseracing should be treated as a “hobby”. If you have chosen to make it your “living”, and never bothered to educate yourselves….now would be a good time to start. No one owes you anything in life. There are plenty of people out there in the last couple of years who have had to “adjust” to the way of the world, and you are no different.