The unthinkable is happening.

One Vine Lady is back in the pack. Way back. Almost out of it, in fact. How can this be? She’s been doing so well at the Bangor Raceway summer.

“Come on Tiger,” Shane Keady said quietly, willing orange- and black-clad driver Heath Campbell and the horse to the front of the group.

“All right, he’s setting up to draft,” Keady said, a little louder. “C’mon Heath. At least get the show.”

Just then, the unbelievable happens.

The horses churn down the final stretch. One Vine Lady zooms to the outside. She surges ahead. And with Keady and the crowd cheering, the 4-year-old bay mare crosses the line first.

Keady and the rest of the crew of slightly stunned University of Maine students and faculty erupt in cheers for the UMaine-owned horse. They do their own pace out to the winner’s circle for a picture.

It’s a lucky night all around. Later on that evening, Marcie Guillette, the 25-year-old livestock manager at UMaine’s Witter Farm, wins a pound of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in a drawing.

When the races end the UMaine group walks to the stables. The students look into Lady’s stall – even though the horse is more interested in a bale of hay – and watch as Campbell and trainer Valerie Grondin pack up for the night.

It’s been a fun night at the races. Lady won. The students who bet on the UMaine horse made a few pennies. Marcie Guillette is going home with a prize.

There’s just one problem.

“I don’t know how to make coffee,” she announces to the group, which erupts in laughter.

It’s good to see the younger types hanging around the track, say many of the older folks in the harness racing industry. That’s just what the industry needs, they say, more young types. Things haven’t been so good lately, what with the decline in the total amount of money bet, known as the handle, at both of Maine’s commercial tracks, the agricultural fairs, and in off-track betting parlors.

Other observers believe more serious measures are needed. They’d like to see video gambling machines at the tracks and bigger purses for the races. And no one seems to know how to deal with the different kinds of wagering that seem to grow more popular.

So a group of young people out at the track is heartening for everyone. Whether it’s enough remains to be seen.

The live racing numbers

Released by the Maine Harness Racing Commission every year, it’s no secret that handles at live races, off-track betting parlors, and the agricultural fairs have dropped for at least the past four years.

In 1998 the total handle for all venues in the entire state was $70,368,305. That slipped to $69,235,176 in 1999 and took another tumble in 2000, down to $67,347,514.

At Bangor Raceway the handle for live racing and the OTB racing was $1,062,961, down about 10 percent from the 2000 figures and after a slight increase from 1999.

“That was actually better business because we had a substantial amount of unprofitable show bets made,” Bangor Raceway manager Fred Nichols said. “We paid out more than we took in.”

Through July 2000 Scarborough had handled about $2,225,000. This year to date, the handle is down about 27 percent, although the track had five fewer race days this year than last.

Bob Tardy, a legislative lobbyist for Scarborough Downs, estimated that the statewide handle may be down seven percent in 2001 when the final numbers are calculated.

“Every year there’s been an incremental decrease,” Tardy said.

Everyone has a theory about why handles continue to fall. Telephone and Internet wagering on horse races cut out the OTBs’ percentage. There are too many options for gamblers, from instant lottery tickets to the state lottery, bingo to New England casinos like Foxwoods.

And everyone has a theory about how to reenergize the industry.

Fred Nichols, for one, would like to see video terminals in Maine tracks, a bill for which was defeated in last November’s election and was a divisive issue for horsemen last year.

“It’s not a quick fix, it’s a permanent escalation of the quality of life for the people who work here,” Fred Nichols said. “By and large these people, this is all they know and they’re pretty ill-equipped … if this place shuts down and racing stopped, it would be hard for them to assimilate into the labor force.”

John Miller, who owns Bangor’s off-track betting parlor, disagrees.

“If they allowed other betting, on dog races, or gambling on video terminals, it’s just going to take away more from harness racing even though it’s funding it,” he said. “I think the industry needs to survive on its own without subsidies at first in order to make it through this period. I don’t know. I wish I knew the answers.”

Miller has reason to be concerned. Like the live tracks, his business has taken a big hit, too.

Changes at the OTB

On a warm, humid afternoon, bettors sat in the downstairs Post Time OTB in Miller’s Restaurant on Main Street in Bangor.

Some of the same regulars from the track have parked themselves in the OTB now that the Bangor meet is over. Others are regulars at Miller’s, which offers up to 15 tracks a day on banks of televisions. Some of the screens are set to CNBC with its stock ticker for gamblers of a different kind.

Just as handles at the live tracks have dropped, so have the handles at OTBs around the state. John Miller said he wants to work with the tracks and help support the harness racing industry – but at what cost to his livelihood?

Miller’s handled about $8,227,000 in 2000, down seven percent from 1999. George Pooler, the OTB’s house man, estimates the 2001 handle will be down another 12 percent by the end of 2001 – “concern time,” Pooler said. Both men attribute the drop in their handle to a variety of factors: a drop in tourism from places like Aroostook County and New Brunswick because of a weakening economy, rising fuel costs, and telephone and internet wagering.

Pooler said many of the OTB’s heavy bettors have been staying home to watch the races on satellite dishes.

“Not one bit of commission is being funneled to us or the harness racing industry,” Pooler said. “It’s going over a phone line out of state. [The bettors are] not coming in here. They’re betting in their living room, watching the same signal we’re getting. It’s going into the same pools but the guy on the other end is getting all the juice and the Maine horsemen are getting nothing.”

Most of the OTB regulars aren’t coming to bet on the Maine tracks, but the big-money tracks like Yonkers in New York and the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It doesn’t matter which racetracks the bettors gamble on – Miller’s, like the other OTBs in Maine, is required to give the commercial tracks one percent of their total handle every year.

“And the way the handle is dropping, that one percent is eating into my profits,” Miller said. “We continue to support the tracks and all the fairs and that’s by statute requirements, plus we go above and beyond. We’re doing our best to help the industry. But when it becomes a hardship for us we need to be able to draw the line.”

Questions for Bass Park

Even if there were to be a sudden upward swing in the harness racing business, it may not matter for Bangor Raceway.

As the City of Bangor plans for the future, the track has come under scrutiny.

The city commissioned a land-use study that will examine the area from Bangor International Airport to the recently acquired waterfront acreage, and the possibility that a new Bangor Auditorium-Civic Center could be sitting on top of the track in the future has worried many harness racing observers.

In reality, Bangor city council member Michael Crowley said last week, the city doesn’t yet have any idea what will happen to the track.

In fact, Crowley said, those fearing the end of Bangor Raceway should be more worried about a public that is increasingly “ambivalent” about harness racing.

“My sense is the threat to harness racing in Bass Park is no greater in its relationship to an Auditorium-Civic Center discussion than it is to general apathy from the public to that particular quote, sport, in Maine,” said Crowley, a co-chair of the committee looking into the future of the Auditorium and Civic Center.

“I don’t think it registers high for a lot of folks,” he added. “And it’s generational. The younger the generation, the less likely that group is to have an affinity to harness racing. When I make a comment like that, I know it can be immediately misinterpreted as my taking a position against harness racing. I’m being honest. I’m not trying to take a position. I’m trying to be candid. And if I’m wrong, help me understand my error and I’ll definitely retreat.”

Crowley emphasized that a decision has not been made, and that the council is trying to consider all the options.

“It’s not that people are adamant that they want to see it go away. I think we all want it to stay because it’s been around.”

Nichols has heard different ideas from different city councilors – that a new Auditorium would sit along Main Street where the Paul Bunyan statue stands, or right along Interstate 395, or be tied into the Bangor Municipal Golf Course land.

“I don’t know what it will come to for our survival,” he said. “This is just an excellent spot. It’s residential, it’s nice here and the animals are just beautiful. It’s nice to have something like this downtown.”

Even though the city doesn’t have a definite plan for Bass Park, the Bangor Historic Track group still has to negotiate next summer’s meet – this summer was the eighth and final year of a contract with the city. The negotiations will fall to Nichols, who plans to meet with city officials in the coming weeks.

Black Bears studying horses

The University of Maine students who cheered on One Vine Lady have more than a passing interest in the horse. They are students in the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry and Agriculture, which offers classes in equine management and reproduction at the school’s Witter Farm. Students can also intern with Valerie Grondin, who was the top-ranked trainer at Bangor this summer.

The hope is that the students earning minors or certificates of equine studies will go into the horse industry as veterinarians, veterinary technicians, horse trainers, farriers, equine business managers or marketing specialists.

“Part of our mission is to support the agriculture industry in the whole state and the horse industry is part of that,” said G. Bruce Wiersma, the dean of the college. “We’re hoping we can do things on campus to benefit the Maine horse industry. … [The students] are so enthusiastic about this.”

One Vine Lady was purchased for about $3,500 (the school used profits from the sale of other horses and winnings from the school’s first racehorse, Venus de Milo, who went lame). One Vine Lady races all over the state and has been quite successful – by the end of the Bangor meet she had three wins.

Grondin’s interns learn the basic care, anatomy and fitness of the horse as well as how to deal with leg problems. She had a student last year who is headed for vet school in Prince Edward Island but had never had hands-on experience with a horse.

“If you look around there’s no new blood. It’s all older people,” said Grondin, a University of Maine graduate who started working at Bangor Raceway cleaning stalls when she was 14. “So at the university we’re trying to introduce it to kids as a career opportunity. There’s lots of jobs in the office, or with the judges or announcers, not just training. There’s money to be made out there. I’m telling the students, there’s a job for you if you don’t like the training aspect.”

Causey said it’s important for the school to be at the track because of another program in which the students retrain old racehorses for riding.

“This helps us establish contact with the racing community and let’s them know that we’re up there and if they have a horse that’s not going to be competitive, they can donate it to us and we can take it,” Causey said.

Ryan Shaw, who went to the track about twice a week this summer, is a UMaine student, and roots for One Vine Lady when she races.

“In the [Bangor Raceway] program it says University of Maine so everyone feels a little common ownership,” he said. “When it wins everyone goes out to the winner’s circle.”

Uncertain future

Drivers Jason Bartlett and Rusty Lanpher know there are no guarantees in the harness racing business anymore. Lanpher, 19, has taken a job at the new Home Depot in Ellsworth. Bartlett, 20, will be a sophomore at Southern Maine Technical College in South Portland. He’s studying industrial engineering.

Bartlett and Lanpher would rather be at the track full-time.

“If I could tell the future, I wouldn’t even go to school,” Bartlett said. “But school, they can’t take it away from you. So I’m gonna go do that, and if this doesn’t work out, then I’m gonna fall back on that.”

Canadian driver Don Dickison and his wife Donna, who manned the Bangor paddock gate this summer, have a son and a daughter who have traveled with their parents ever since they were babies. Both children worked at Bangor Raceway in the summer.

“It’s their world,” Donna Dickison said. “It’s the only world they’ve known for a long time and they can’t wait for it every year. They don’t look for anything else.”

But Don and Donna have encouraged them to go into other fields. Both attend Canadian colleges. Darci wants to be a doctor, Danny is studying computers.

“It’ll be a shame if this track closes,” Donna Dickison said. “There’s been a lot of lives touched by this place that will be lost.”