The group representing participants at Leamington Raceway is crying foul over a development concerning funding.
The Lakeshore Horse Racing Association said Monday that their representative group, the Ontario Harness Horse Association, is having its traditional funding cut by the province and that the LHRA will soon have to join a competing group, based in Toronto, to continue receiving their current benefits. The LHRA said to complicate matters further, there was no indication that this change was coming.
The news is deeply concerning to Tom Bain of the LHRA, who told BlackburnNewsWindsor.com that the whole thing came out of the blue.
"We're just told that 'the group your membership belongs to is disbanded and you have to join our group,'" said Bain, who is also the mayor of Lakeshore. "We just feel strongly that this is just one more nail in the coffin for harness racing in Leamington."
The funding change is another setback in the LHRA's negotiations with the Ontario Racing Board concerning a long-term deal for Leamington Raceway. But Bain said one thing that irked him about this development was that the LHRA was not told ahead of time this might happen. He said the OHHA was the lifeline for the local group as far as operations were concerned at the Leamington track.
"It's the group that represents us in negotiations, in purse money distribution and represents us in the number of race days that we have," said Bain.
This past fall, Bain said negotiations had stalled and they believed Leamington was not getting its proper share. For example, some other Ontario racetracks were offered a chance to have slot machines put back in, but Leamington was not given that option. Locally, slots were in place at the former Windsor Raceway. Also, Bain said Leamington Raceway has an agreement in place for the 2019 and 2020 racing seasons, but tracks elsewhere in the province have been given much longer contract terms.
Bain said the one thing the LHRA is trying to accomplish is to convince the Ontario Racing Board to allow those who work the racetracks a say on who represents them in negotiations and how they do so. Despite this latest development, the LHRA has scheduled a meeting in Toronto to finalize purse money and race dates for this season and negotiations are ongoing.
