They won't be getting out of the gates at Great Falls this summer, and Missoula has only a couple of weeks to come up with a new operator for its two-day August meet.
Missoula County commissioners have made it clear they don't want to get back in the game themselves. Eric Spector's private company from California is out of the picture after running meets in Great Falls the past two summers and in Missoula last year after a three-year hiatus.
Merritt Pride, a horse racing enthusiast, trainer and hunting outfitter from Twin Bridges, expressed serious interest in staging the races at both sites in 2011. But he and Cascade County commissioners couldn't agree last week on the two-year contract Pride and a business partner wanted.
Both sides left the door open for further negotiations for 2012 and beyond.
Pride had approached Missoula County Fairgrounds director Steve Earle and the Western Montana Turf Club about handling the Missoula meet if things fell into place in the Electric City.
At a meeting of the Montana Board of Horse Racing last Thursday to set final racing dates for 2011, the board encouraged Earle to try to put together a proposal by May 1.
Earle is nearing the end of his first year as Missoula fairgrounds director, and he became a big fan of racing at last summer's fair, when attendance mushroomed and the grandstands were filled on the two days that races were held.
On Monday, he huddled with turf club leaders Toni Hinton and her husband, Jim Johnson, and Bill Nooney, longtime Missoula fair and racing leader, to discuss options for racing Aug. 12 and 13.
The upshot: The turf club, the envy of many small tracks in the West, is going to give it a whirl.
"We're trying to get as much information as we can in the next week," Hinton said. "We're going to have a turf club meeting within the week and see if this is something feasible to do."
It's a rare approach, but not unheard of. Just last year, a couple of horsewomen from the turf club in Kalispell pulled off two days of racing at the Northwest Montana Fair and lived to tell about it.
Flathead County has applied for two more dates in 2011, on the weekend after Missoula's races are scheduled. Like Missoula, it was granted two more weeks at Thursday's meetings "to iron out a few things," said Ryan Sherman, executive secretary of the Board of Horse Racing.
The challenges for both tracks are many. Without the three weekends of racing in Great Falls leading up to the August schedule, horses and jockeys may be hard to come by.
"Without Great Falls we have a real hole in our circuit," Earle said.
"That is one concern, without that feeder meet," Sherman said. "Can it be done? Absolutely."
Sherman estimated it would take between $10,000 and $12,000 a day to put on a two-day meet.
The Missoula fair is expected to foot the bill for facilities preparation and maintenance, including getting the track ready - a key piece of the puzzle, Hinton said.
Like Kalispell, Missoula would rely on sponsors and experienced volunteers. That's a bailiwick of the Western Montana Turf Club, which has 17 active members and has been in the business of raising sponsorships since its inception.
The club has just set up as a limited liability company. Sherman is getting numbers together to see how much money the track can expect from statewide simulcast revenues should it run two days of racing.
"Until those numbers are determined, there's really not much planning we can do," Nooney said.
The state board took over simulcast operations from Spector on an emergency basis last fall and is on the verge of gaining full control. The legislation that grants that, Senate Bill 16, awaits only the expected signature of Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
Montana tracks that host live racing
receive a share of simulcast revenue, based
on the number of dates it runs.
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