LAUREL, MD – Devro Hebron’s deep voice overshadowed the crowd of bettors as almost a dozen thoroughbred horses dashed toward the Laurel Park finish line during the first race on a sunny April afternoon.
His voice grew louder with each exclamation, urging the number 10 horse, Full Card, down the home stretch.
“You bred for this turf!”
“Sit down on this 10 horse, boy!”
This was one of three wins Hebron needed to cash-in on a $24 pick-three ticket.
Hebron repeated the lines again and again until the thoroughbred galloped to first place.
“There you go! There you go! You bred for this turf!” Hebron shouted excitedly.
This is an ordinary Saturday for Hebron, who weekly drives four minutes from his house to gamble on horses at Laurel Park on Wednesdays through Sundays — all days that the racetrack, which offers both live racing and simulcast betting on other tracks, is open.
“Say I’m home and I got a headache, I come to the track- headache gone,” Hebron said. “It’s like a relief for me. This is my outlet.”
But the track is facing a cloudy future that threatens to fully dismantle Hebron’s weekly routine.
Nationwide, dozens of racetracks have shut down in the past 20 years.
Laurel Park is not immune to the decline in attendance, according to industry officials and state reports.
An unresolved deal on the table might end nearly 115 years of thoroughbred races at Laurel and transform the place into a horse training facility. But before this happens, the Preakness Stakes, the second jewel in the Triple Crown following the Kentucky Derby will run there May 16 for the first time due to renovations in Pimlico Race Course, the race’s Baltimore home.
Hebron and other long-timers say they are getting priced out of their home track. He will go to a different offtrack betting facility on Maryland’s biggest race day because of the high expenses in Laurel.
Tickets for this year’s Preakness Stakes started at $285 for general admission to a two-day event at both the Preakness and Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, according to Tiffani Steer,vice president of communications for 1S/T, which owned and operated this race.
This is not a significant change from last years’ two-day prices at Pimlico, but unlike last time, there is no cheaper option for a single Preakness day, according to Steer. The $221 parking tickets for this year are also around $50 more than average prices for the previous year.
An event that has seen hundreds of thousands of attendees in Pimico in the past is getting capped at 4,800 to provide the best experience for guests within the smaller space, Steer said.
“They trying to get every dime they can get,” Hebron said. “So they kicked all the little people out, like me and my friends, to bring all the rich people in there, and that ain’t right.”
Lives Lived by the Racetracks
Kevin Richardson, has worked with horses and gambled at Laurel for decades. He even has an ownership stake in a horse running on Preakness Day, but he won’t be there because of the high ticket price.
Richardson’s gold tooth shined as he smiled and spoke about his memories taking care of horses at the Laurel Park backstretch many years ago.
For some of the long-time patrons, there is a connection that goes beyond gambling. Laurel once provided them their jobs and a way of life.
“All these people here is the best community in the world,” Richardson said. “We’re a different kind of breed of people. We not like the outside people because we are called horsemen.”
The Baltimore native lost both of his parents and sister in one year when he was 17, and lived on the streets for a year and a half. He came to Timonium Race Track, after his oldest brother told him to find a job at a track.
Backstretch work always gave the opportunity to make money to eat and have a room to stay in, Richardson said.
“You didn’t have to worry about whether or not you had somewhere to lay your head,” he said.
Once a daily gambler, Richardson now only attends big races or to hangout with his friends. On April 18, he came to Laurel for a special occasion- he had the “honor” to help spread the ashes of a local racing legend.
Richardson, 66, spent 16 years of his time working at Laurel Park with trainer King T. Leatherbury, who passed away in February.
Leatherbury won more than 6,000 races and ranked fourth in wins when elected to Hall of Fame in 2015, according to the National Museum of Racing.
“Every time he turned around his horses was winning races,” Richardson said. “Our horses depended on us… they was like our children.”
On a grassy patch near the paddock, Richardson said he joined mourners who spread the remains atop of where the ashes of Ben’s Cat, an iconic horse Leatherbury bred and trained, were buried years ago.
Hebron, 62, also worked with Leatherbury for 11 years, but his connection to horse races began when he was a child.
One Saturday when Hebron was 12 years old, his parents took him to the now-closed Bowie Race Track and told him to pick a horse. That horse won $55, and Hebron said he got to keep every cent of that.
“It was a wonderful feeling,” Hebron said. “I think that’s when I started enjoying horses.”
When Hebron turned 17, he and his younger brother went to the Laurel Park stable gate at 4:30 a.m. to ask for jobs. From then, he spent about 13 years working with horses —experiences that he still thinks about today.
“I’m reminiscing all the time, because all the old guys that was there that taught me, they all passed away,” Hebron said.
As people die, so does the industry
Darrin Stratford, a 60-year-old Laurel resident, has attended the track since childhood, and placed his first bet illegally as a teenager. He remembers 30-40 buses of people coming to the facility and the intensity of a time when more gamblers meant larger betting pools and bigger payouts.
“We used to go from TV to TV to TV, just with excitement and joy, but now it’s just like, it’s nothing,”Stratford said. “Our generation coming up, we had no choice but to come to the racetrack.”
“Times, things have changed. ”
From 2007 to 2024, reports from the Maryland Racing Commission show a more than 77% decrease in attendance at Laurel Park.
“Many folks, instead of deciding to actually come out for the on-track experience on a day to day basis, they’re more comfortable sitting at home in front of their television screens or their computers and betting on the races online,” Dan Illman, director of communications for the Maryland Jockey Club, said.
Both Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course had an estimated combined attendance of more than 2.8 million people in 1989, the year that intertrack wagering began, according to data from Illman. The number dropped to under 500,000 in 2019.
Moving Preakness to Laurel was the first option for officials. But what happens longterm isn’t clear.
“There’s a long history,” Illman said. “We’ve had races here for over 100 years, and since Preakness must be held in the state of Maryland, Laurel was the obvious choice.”
This race will be bittersweet, Illman added, because of a proposal to shut down live racing and turn Laurel Park into a training facility once Pimlico reopens in 2027.
The Maryland Stadium Authority Board of Directors in April approved a $48.5 million agreement for the conversion, which Gov. Wes Moore said would be a “cost-effective path to a world-class racing future” according to Moore’s office.
But this deal has not yet been finalized — The Legislative Policy Committee on May 4 imposed a 45-day delay on Maryland Stadium Authority’s purchase, and requested a cost-benefit analysis of the acquisition, according to the department’s letter to the authority.
If the deal moves forward, live racing at Laurel Park will end and so will offtrack betting, at least for the near future, Illman said. However, he added that the track may re-open as a simulcast facility down the road.
To Richardson, these unprecedented changes are about money and not about the people. If Laurel Park turns into a training facility or closes down, Richardson said that memories are everything that the people who come down there often will have to hold on to.
This track gives, especially retired people, something to get up in the morning and look forward to – it is their “sanctuary,” he said.
“These people that have been born down here and raised down here, got homes down here that comes over here every day. These are the people coming,” Richardson said. “They will not have anywhere to go because they’ve taken away their lifeline.”
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