Plans are underway to deliver harness racing to Nevada within the type of a 40,000 square-foot resort “racino” within the small city of Pahrump, 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
Thoroughbred racing on the White Pine County Honest, one of many few locations to catch some reside horse racing in Nevada. (Picture: Mike Brunker/Las Vegas Overview Journal)
The proposal is the brainchild of the Nevada Standardbred Affiliation (NSA), a corporation dedicated to selling harness racing within the state, The Pahrump Valley Occasions studies.
There’s a main alternative right here,” Jeff Zidek, a racing veteran and marketing consultant on the challenge, informed the Occasions. “The western a part of the nation has only a few tracks.”
In addition to a ⅞-mile monitor with a steady for 280 horses, the ability would come with eating places, purchasing services, campgrounds, a waterpark, batting cages, a movie show, and digital actuality points of interest. It will even have parking for greater than 2,500 automobiles and 200 RVs, based on the proposal.
Horses for Programs
NSA president Tim Bohannon additionally desires an annual three-day competition that may be held over the lengthy Nevada Day weekend.
Bohannon pitched the challenge to county commissioners final week, and the response was enthusiastic. The challenge may generate about 200 full-time jobs for horse trainers, vets and techs, groundskeepers, ticket distributors, and different hospitality staff, Bohannon informed commissioners.
Racing would run from late October till the top of Could, per the proposal, with two weekly meets that includes 12 reside races a day through the season. They’d even be simulcast internationally.
Las Vegas’ Horse Racing Historical past
Regardless of Nevada’s standing as a playing mecca, horse racing has by no means taken off within the state outdoors of the White Pine and Elko County gala’s. In the meantime, efforts to introduce thoroughbred racing to Las Vegas itself have been short-lived.
Las Vegas Park opened in 1953 and lasted simply six weeks. Las Vegas Solar–founder Hank Greenspun alleged in his 1966 autobiography that the entire thing was an embezzlement scheme from begin to end.
In 1963 got here Thunderbird Downs. The monitor was positioned on the again grounds of the previous Thunderbird Resort, which as soon as stood on land that’s now a part of the Fontainebleau challenge. It lasted three years. In 1981, Las Vegas Downs opened in Henderson, however struggled financially from the get-go.
Regardless of a remit to offer thoroughbred and quarter horse racing, all through its temporary existence it primarily supplied canine racing.
Whereas on paper, Nevada would appear like pure match for horse racing, the truth is that there has at all times been an excessive amount of competitors within the state, too many different alternatives to gamble in additional snug, air-conditioned environments.
The NSA is hoping that its idea of a racetrack that can be a contemporary leisure heart will buck the pattern.
