76 HOOF BEATS january 2014photo by paul franz

We need to survive on our own; we can’tbe successful piggybacked on another

business. We’ve got to do it ourselves.”Bill Faucher

TWo NeW HampsHire resources went belly-up this century. First, the Old Man of the Mountain crumbled off the face of the White Mountains in Franconia in 2003. Six years later, the last pari-mutuel harness race was con-tested at Rockingham Park in Salem.

The Old Man is never coming back, but there’s hope that the last horse to win a harness race in New Hampshire won’t be the 13-1 shot named Major League on Aug. 30, 2009.

If the Granite State were to have a harness racing renaissance, the man most responsible will be Bill Faucher of Hinsdale. The 75-year-old enjoyed a comfortable living in the sport. In 1981, his stable earned $1 million. He kept 50

Self StarterBill Faucher wantsto bring racing back to New HampshireBy Chip ainsworth

HOOF BEATS january 2014 77

horses on his 35-acre farm and employed 23 workers.

Now, said Faucher, “Everybody’s moved out of the state.”

Yet Faucher has never given up hope. “People would get back into it here if

I could generate a place for them to go,” he said.

specifically, the state needs a har-ness track. To achieve that end, Faucher’s opening an off-track

betting parlor, Hinsdale OTB, and will use the profits to secure a loan that would kickstart construction of a new harness track in three years. He’s part-

nered with the Western New England Harness Horsemen’s Association and has 51-percent controlling interest in the million-dollar project.

“The OTB is something I’d been preaching to them,” said Faucher. “We need to create our own business and gen-erate our own purse schedule. We need to survive on our own; we can’t be suc-cessful piggybacked on another business. We’ve got to do it ourselves.”

The opportunity for an OTB arose when Hinsdale Raceway collapsed under a huge debt load and went bankrupt five years ago. In November, the bulldozers moved in and razed it to the ground.

Faucher’s facility is a small, one-story rectangular structure which can hold up to 50 people. Now that the project is off the ground, his fellow Granite Staters are wishing him the best.

“We supported Bill’s plan complete-ly,” said Rockingham Park President Ed Callahan. “Billy and his crew have worked hard and we wish them the best of luck.”

Faucher said he was able to gain the governor’s approval with one word: jobs.

“I promised I would create new jobs,” he said. “That’s what they want to hear today.”

After getting legislative and local

78 HOOF BEATS january 2014hinsdale grandstand by george smallsreed • rockingham park by ed keys • hinsdale sign from usta files

We supported Bill’s plan completely.Billy and his crew have worked hard

and we wish them the best of luck.”ed callahan

self starter

approval, Faucher found an OTB site across from the old racetrack which had been a fireworks store. Unbeknownst to him, the property was once owned by the racetrack and is now owned by a credi-tor from whom track owner Joe Sullivan III had taken out a significant loan, using the track property as collateral. On a cold December evening in 2012, an attorney informed the Hinsdale planning committee that the deed forbade gam-bling on the premises.

“We don’t mean to rain on Faucher’s parade,” he said. “We’re reasonable peo-ple. . . .”

Faucher realized he’d been had.

“My attorney didn’t read the cov-enants,” he said. “The first thing to do is read the deed. I was shocked, but I wasn’t going to piss money away on lawyers.”

And so he bought a piece of property for $100,000 two miles between the old track and the center of town and put up his own building. Construction began last spring and as of this writing, the parking lot needs to be paved and the monitors and big screens haven’t been installed, nor have the half-dozen United Tote betting machines. The satellite dish will go on the ground; a fancy cupola is on the roof.

“I’m putting the dish out of sight,” said Faucher. “It doesn’t look good; I want a real class outfit.”

The dreams that die hardest are those that come true and then disappear. On a damp, gray

November afternoon in 2013, Faucher pointed across a hay field to the faint outline of what was once a half-mile training track.

“Afterward, we’d tub ’em in this little pond right here to keep the heat out of their legs,” he remembered. “It was quite an operation. We’d train ’em here and send ’em to the Meadowlands.”

HOOF BEATS january 2014 79

better days: Clockwise from near left: Bulldozers had barely made a mark when this photo was taken in 1958; this past November they razed the venue. • But in the 1960s and ’70s, Hinsdale Raceway saw upward of 250 locally owned horses annually ply its oval, and attracted harness racing fans from Hartford, Conn., to Montreal, Canada . • Rockingham Park was a popular venue until a fire destroyed its grandstand in 1980, ushering in a dark period for harness racing in the Granite State. Although rebuilt, the track never regained its former edge.

Faucher won 1,480 races over a 32-year career. When he stepped out of the sulky for the last time at age 58, he handed the reins to a young up-and-comer from Maine named Walter Case Jr. Today the stalls that stabled Sure Show, Taurus Romeo and Seatrain are all empty.

“Everybody knows Seatrain,” Faucher said. “He was an outlaw horse. He’d run off the track, but I claimed him for $50,000 and he retired at 13 and earned more than $825,000.”

Faucher’s farm on the banks of the Connecticut River is quiet these days and the pasture is empty. Inside the barn is a hay baler and manure spreader. Further down between the stalls is a 1976 Cadillac, painted metallic blue with a starting gate folded behind it.

“The harness business has been very good to me,” said Faucher, whose professional career has run the gamut from owning a paper com-pany and convenience store to serving one term as the state representative from Cheshire County.

He was a USTA director for 15 years, overseeing trainers and drivers, and he co-founded the aforementioned Western New England Harness Horsemen’s Association.

Up the road from him lives his friend Dick Barnes, the association’s secretary and a longtime Standardbred owner. Like Faucher, he yearns for the days of the 1960s and ’70s when Hinsdale Raceway was luring harness fans from Hartford to Montreal.

“Fifty years ago, there were 200 to 250 horses racing at Hinsdale that were owned by people right here in the val-ley,” said Barnes. “Everybody had one or two horses.”

Business was good in those days, with handles in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rockingham Park was racing harness horses, along with the Rochester Fair.

“People were moving to New Hampshire, building farms for breed-ing purposes,” said Faucher. “The first thing that put a crimp in it was when Rockingham Park burned to the ground. That really set us back; it was the begin-ning of losing everything. We lost our percentage of purse money that was legislated. No track meant no gambling meant no percentage.”

USTA membership in New Hampshire has dropped precipitously, from 475 members in 1980 to 97 today, a decline of nearly 80 percent.

Foxwoods opened in 1986 and Mohegan Sun in 1992; the Internet made it possible to open accounts and watch and wager from home. In 2009, the New Hampshire legislature eliminated

funding to regulate live racing. Today live racing’s been replaced by 10 “charitable gaming rooms” throughout the state where about $80 million is gambled each year.

if Faucher is second-guessing himself and pondering using the OTB profits for a harness meet at Rockingham

Park, he should first make the 100-mile drive across state. He’ll drive into a crumbling, pot-holed parking lot with a tattered black flag hanging from the track’s spire like the last vestige of a sunken pirate ship.

80 HOOF BEATS january 2014photo by ed keys

bill faucher

tough campaigner: Bill Faucher enjoyed a successful career in harness racing, training and driving the likes of Seatrain, Sure Show and Taurus Romeo; co-founding the Western New England Harness Horsemen’s Association; and serving as a USTA director.

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82 HOOF BEATS january 2014

When he walks inside, it’ll look like someone stopped time, put down the brooms and paint brushes and walked away. The pale blue carpeting in the dingy dining area is thin and worn to the floor, patched together in places by gray duct tape. “This Section Closed” is written in orange Magic Marker on a cardboard box.

There are signs for Texas Hold ’em tournaments and bingo games, and “pre-ferred parking” costs a dollar.

Bettors trudge up the stairs past dilapi-dated trophy cases holding garish trophies and black-and-white photos of harness horses such as Mountain Skipper and Miracle Chief. Sea Biscuit was stabled here as a 2-year-old, unable to win a race in five starts over the Rockingham oval.

Seven tellers take wagers or punch out credit vouchers to an expressionless clientele that’s mostly male, over 50, overweight and under-groomed, wearing sweatshirts and blue jeans.

Some sit in the grandstand studying programs, glancing out past a decrepit tote board sheathed in frayed plastic that’s been ripped to shreds by the wind. Flocks of Canada geese and seagulls wander the infield near the faded green-and-white furlong poles.

These days, Rockingham Park is much nicer to leave than to arrive at, the exact opposite of what Faucher would require to revive harness racing. For him, it’s a new-track-or-bust.

He’s still waiting for the gam-ing license to arrive from the New Hampshire Racing and Charitable Gaming Commission.

“The application was 72 pages,” said Barnes. “The racing commission has to go through and review the thing and they’re working on that.”

“We’ll get it one of these days; they say everything’s in our favor,” said Faucher. “We’ll be open by the first or second week of January, but we need time to work out the kinks. Then we’ll have a grand opening on Kentucky Derby Day (May 3).”

Faucher might have a tougher time getting licensed than he expects. Lakes Region (The River Card

Room in Milford) went out of simul-cast business 18 months after Hinsdale closed.

Once the license arrives—if it arrives—

Faucher is keenly aware it won’t be the walk-in bettors that make or break the business.

“The biggest thing is phone wagering because other states don’t have that,” he said. “The year before he closed, Joe Sullivan did $22 million, and if I could do half that at 20 cents on the dollar, I’d be tickled pink.”

Hinsdale’s bankruptcy left a bad taste because phone account wagerers lost everything. Some of their money was recouped through bankruptcy court, but the process has been arduous. One of them, Las Vegas gambler Hershel Bird (the father of women’s basketball star Sue Bird), lost $138,000. Turf writer Andrew Beyer and handicapper Michael (“The Wizard”) Kipness also took sig-nificant hits.

“I gotta live with that,” said Faucher. “I’ll inspire confidence by creating a bond and having dedicated accounts. If I were to go out of business, bettors would be assured of getting their money back.”

Once the OTB is up and running, Faucher and his group will get around 20 cents on every dollar wagered, but out of that comes state, track and decoder fees, plus local taxes and miscellaneous expenses such as electricity and payroll. According to an industry source, that would net him around 5 cents on the dollar, and that’s with no rebates back to bettors.

“No one running a phone operation isn’t giving their big customers some sort of rebate,” the source said. “If he’s rebat-ing, his net revenue could be as low as 11/2 percent.”

These things considered, if Hinsdale OTB does in fact handle $10 million its first fiscal year, Faucher can expect a net profit of between $150,000 and $500,000. The profits would go in escrow until there’s enough money for a loan to build the new harness track. He has the site already picked out, a 170-acre parcel of land on a hill above the OTB parlor.

“There’s nothing but plateau on top,” he said. “I have spoken for the property and hopefully it’ll become available. If this all happens, it’ll create 2,500 jobs.”

Chip ainsworth is a freelance writer liv-ing in New Hampshire. y To comment on this story, e-mail us at readerforum@ustrotting.com.

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