At 4:24 p.m. EST on a gray, misty Saturday, Freehold Raceway went out of business, running its last harness race 171 years after it opened. It was America’s oldest active venue for racehorses, and the farewell looked all too familiar.
Maybe not the weather, but the mood felt the same, even watching on a computer screen from more than 600 miles away. It was reminiscent of the final day at Arlington three years ago and at Golden Gate Fields six months back. The demise of Garden State Park in 2001 and Atlantic City Race Course in 2015 established the regretful template in New Jersey.
What was reported to be a larger-than-normal but smaller-than-heyday crowd of at least 1,000 people showed up to celebrate the past, prolong the present and damn the future. Like all other track closings, it had a Dickensian Christmas mood, ghosts and all.
This soulless shuttering came with little notice. Penn National Gaming, which partnered with Greenwood Racing to buy Freehold for $46 million in 1998, announced in September it was closing the track and the Favorites off-track betting parlor in Toms River, N.J. It did so with an abruptly frosty layoff notice to employees.
“Unfortunately, the operations of the racetrack cannot continue under current conditions, and we do not see a plausible way forward,” Freehold general manager Howard Bruno wrote at the time.
The sorrowful tomorrow finally arrived Saturday. In a span of just under four hours, 11 races worth $302,600 in increased purses were run, including nine for pacers and two for trotters.
“I promise I’ll do my best not to tear up,” track announcer Larry Fox said during the final post parade. For the most part, he was a man of his word.
The $8,800 finale for non-winners of $3,500 in their last five starts was won by a pacer named T’s Raider II, a 4-year-old bay gelding. With Johnathan Ahle driving for co-owner and trainer Rachelle Morris, he drew off by 5 3/4 lengths at the end of the two-lap mile. It was a popular win since he was the odds-on favorite in the field of eight. Who knows how many of those tickets actually will be cashed rather than made into souvenirs?
“I implore the fans to erupt and cheer as you voice and echo the weight and legacy of Freehold Raceway,” Fox said in his final call.
They obliged him, many walking out onto the track apron from the sheltered grandstand. A little rain in the gloaming of a 48-degree winter afternoon was not going to stop them from drinking in that scene one last time.
The winner’s circle did not just include Ahle and Morris and co-owner Howie Gluck. There were plenty of people who wanted to get one last selfie with one last winner. Writing for US Trotting, Katie Eick said that even T’s Raider II “was patient as everyone lingered in the winner’s circle, trying to make the moment last as long as possible, not yet ready to say goodbye.”
As the day progressed all too quickly and ceremonies between races honored past champions, names like Riyadh and Pine Chip and Zippy Chippy and Paddy’s Laddy and memories like the triple dead heat in ’53 flashed before the minds’ eyes of longtime racegoers. Fox’s very name brought to mind his iconic predecessor Larry Lederman, the voice of Freehold who died in March.
“Everybody here is basically family,” owner-trainer Brandon Mongiello told New Jersey News 12. “It’s the same people every week, and it’s a shame this has to come to an end.”
It all started eight years before the Civil War. During the Franklin Pierce administration, when New Jersey was one of the 31 states, the inaugural Monmouth County Agricultural Fair in 1853 included harness races on the property midway between Princeton and the Jersey Shore. There were idle periods and even a nearly half-century state prohibition on gambling. For the most part, the races went on and led to Freehold becoming New Jersey’s first pari-mutuel track in 1941.
Freehold thrived in the post-war era when horse racing was the only legal form of gambling on the eastern seaboard. It even survived a 1984 fire that destroyed the grandstand.
The beginning of the end might be pinpointed to 1978, when the first casino opened in Atlantic City. From that seedling came alternative forms of gambling, simulcast signals from other tracks and New Jersey’s groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case that ended the national ban on sports wagering in 2018.
With all sorts of gambling available on home TV and eventually handheld devices, a day at the races grew less attractive. Attendance and handle plunged and tracks closed, not just in New Jersey but across the country and even around the world. Now only Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands are hosting live horse races in the state.
There has not been any announcement about Penn National’s plans for the 57-acre Freehold property. There have been local media reports that a housing development is the most likely outcome, even as there has been a last-ditch effort by horsemen to save the track. As was the case before Arlington Park was torn down last year, that feels like a long shot.
“To everyone who made Freehold Raceway so extraordinary,” Bruno wrote Saturday, “we wish you all the best in your future endeavors and hope our paths may cross again.”
