As for racing being a fool’s game, do you mean owning race horses or betting on them?
Yeah, owning is a fool’s game — There’s a saying in the business: “Do you know how to become a millionaire in horse racing? Start out as a multimillionaire.”
But the owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms etc. at a small track like Boise don’t do it for the money; they do it for the love of the game and the love of horses.
Personally, I like to watch the races. And $2 to get in is about the cheapest entertainment around. And if I bet $2 on a race or two and lose, so what? Or if I bet $2 on each of the 8 or 10 races in a day, it’s still, including admission, only $18 to $22, which ain’t too bad when you think about the cost of concerts, skiing, snowmobiling and other things Idahoans do for fun.
Actually, I rarely bet on every race, and I generally pick up a winning bet now and then, to lower the cost even more.
And ain’t nobody ever lost as much betting on a horse race as they have playing the stock market!

Many come from outside the area and must rent housing and spend for day-to-day living, which would be spent elsewhere if not for the track. The 700 to 800 horses on the backside during the racing season must be fed, bedded and otherwise cared for every day. If there were no races, the horses and their attendant people would be not be there.

In my own case, if I didn’t own horses that run at Les Bois, the money I have spent on this passion could have been used to travel — outside Treasure Valley, outside Idaho and even outside the country. I could have gone to those neat places Guardian gets to visit for his day job. In any case, some or all of my money I spent in Treasure Valley because of the horse races, probably would have gone elsewhere.

Nope; it’s still *the only* way to make food!

Pathetic. What we need are more “real” farms — the kind that don’t really exist any more except in the speeches of politicians. Instead of making a museum exibit, just make the ground available to the public to actually grow things on.

It’s still a good way to make food.

As for moving the fairgrounds — heck, it’s the only thing the Garden City area has going for it, now that the state has made them close the casinos and the cops have driven the brothels underground.

As for the horse racing — the racing hasn’t been the problem as much as have the idiot county comishes. The outfit that ran the races the past two seasons would be way in the black if the comishes hadn’t raised the rent by a couple of zillion percent from what it had been.

The previous operator had been doing pretty well, until the commishes butted in and kept changing things, changing the conditions, etc. Granted, Arnell didn’t know what the hell he was doing when he first took it over, but he was learning to listen to people who do know. And he had cracked down on all the druggies, thrown some of them off the track, got others to clean up their act, etc. And when they nailed him for serving to underage drinkers, they did not charge him with any violation, showed no evidence of underage drinking, etc., just yanked the license.

Now, another outfit wants to run it, but the commishes have stalled on a decision until many of the horse owners have given up and taken their cayuses elsewhere, while others don’t know what to do because they have no place to train their horses and get them in shape for races when the county won’t let them use the track until the commishes make a decision.

Upshot is, even if the commishes finally OK the current offer, it may be too late.

Well, at least there still will be something in the G.C. area (the fairgrounds is technically not *in* the city; it’s in the county) besides just more subdivisions.

If the commishes want to do something actually useful, they could change the name back to fairgrounds — a word people can actually understand.

How about a labor camp for the Sheriff. They could grow the food they eat and raise livestock to put meat on the food trays for county inmates.

Long term inmates would get to earn their upkeep and costs of incarceration.