James T. Dresher:

Thank you. Again, my name is Jim Dresher. I’m the chairman of the new Maryland Jockey Club. Contrary to what many folks may believe, this is not a eulogy. Thank you for allowing me to be here today. About a month ago, I called Jim Gagliano and said, “Jim, there’s so many good things happening in Maryland. In your remarks, would you say something good about what we have going?” And he said, “Jim, I’ll give you 10 or 15 minutes to come up and talk about Maryland yourself.” So that’s when I received this invitation when I knew a month ago how much was happening. I’d also introduce, we have Jeff Cherry who’s in our audience. Jeff’s another board member of ours, architect by trade, but importantly, he’s the chairman of our facilities committee overseeing the redevelopment of Pimlico Racecourse. Uniquely, he is also a board member of the James Beard Foundation, so I’m sure you will have good food at the track.

The Maryland Jockey Club was formed, the new Maryland Jockey Club. Our board was formed on July 1 of 2025. We are a 501 nonprofit entity formed to support Maryland’s racing industry and the Park Heights community that surrounds Pimlico. Bill Knauf is our president and general manager. Many of you know Bill as he formerly was the vice president of Monmouth Park. These are exciting times in Maryland. It’s been a very busy last 15 months. In 2025, Maryland state took possession of Pimlico Racecourse. We have torn down the clubhouse and all of the barns. The track and the facilities, those facilities are still in place. We removed and preserved the historic Derby winner stall, and that will be reinstalled in a museum inside the new clubhouse. Uniquely, this will be a ship-in only racing facility. We will have 300 stalls on site. So, when we have racing festival weekends such as Preakness and Black-Eyed Susan weekend, we will be able to accommodate transient people who are in for weeks at a time or days at a time.

But it’s a ship-in format. Preakness in 2027 will be at Pimlico. We will have full equine facilities. Our clubhouse will not be ready, so we will be in temporary construction for fans, similar to what you see at other major sporting events, the PGA and other major sporting events. Preakness 2028 will be at Pimlico and we will have our new clubhouse completed. And you can see that’s the rendering there. Also, just two weeks ago, we closed on the purchase of Laurel Park. Laurel Park will continue with live racing until Pimlico reopens permanently on a year-round basis, which is more likely to be sometime in 28. It will be a permanent training center after that, and we think it’ll be a world-class training center. We’re going to completely rebuild it. Laurel has hosted racing and training for more than 100 years. So, we think it’s a perfect location for horsemen for a training center.

We have new stalls and new dorms for our employees or backstretch folks and new horseman facilities, and we’ll have 1,200 stalls at Laurel. I think I have a rendering here of the Preakness barn that’s under construction. So, you see we’re making some headway. That’s a brand-new barn for the Preakness and the Stakes barn as well. And this is an overhead here of the construction site. On the right there, you see this demolished. That was the site of our old clubhouse. You can see the racetrack is largely intact and the infield. So that is the side that will be the fan side for paddocks and everything about that. So, Pimlico and Laurel are now owned by the Maryland Stadium Authority. It’s the same entity that owns Raven Stadium and Orioles Park at Camden Yards. It’s a hybrid state public/private kind of a partnership.

You’ve all heard that last week we settled on the Preakness Intellectual Property. 1/ST Racing had maintained the ownership of the Preakness Intellectual Property. Maryland purchased it. We settled July 30. It was funded through a revenue bond. There was no taxpayer money involved in that. We found out by the licensing fee that was an arrangement between the state and 1/ST Racing. It was a substantial fee, as you can imagine, the lease rights like that. And Maryland just stepped into those rights. So, the funding of the revenue bond will be by the agreement where Maryland Jockey Club will be responsible for that bond, but it’s issued through the Maryland Economic Development Comp Corporation known as Medco. The Maryland Jockey Club, the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, and the Maryland Horse Breeders Association worked together on this. Every member of every board signed a letter unanimously and sent along to our governor recommending the state acquisition.

Mike Hankin, many of you know Mike, he’s the co-CEO of Brown Advisory and a Maryland Jockey Club board member, led an effort through the Greater Baltimore Committee — it’s very instrumental in the influence of this. The Greater Baltimore Committee is the premier and most important business organization in our region. And they voted unanimously to go to our governor and say, “Governor, the Pimlico rights need to stay. The Preakness rights need to stay in Maryland.” So, the Greater Baltimore committee also voted unanimously. At that point, racing and breeding along with the Baltimore business community were aligned. We went to Governor Moore, and he agreed that Maryland should own the intellectual property. This was partially a financial decision, as I said, and partially a controlled decision to keep the Preakness rights in Maryland. Similar to New York on a much smaller scale, now the state owns our intellectual property and our tracks and a nonprofit board operates racing.

So, Maryland has the tools for success. We have a new Pimlico. We will have a new Laurel Park training center. We have a very supportive governor. $520 million. $520 million exclusive of the Preakness purchase rights. $520 million of state money for new training and racing facilities, including for new dormitories for backstretch employees. The Preakness intellectual property again was separate. So, we have Maryland’s Thoroughbred industry, Baltimore’s business community, and our governor and first lady of Maryland pulling in the same direction. Maryland is all in and supporting the Preakness and the Triple Crown. Governor Wes Moore and First Lady Dawn Moore have been absolutely spectacular in their support. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve never seen a governor or a first lady so out in front to support our industry and support our sport and support the Preakness. It’s pretty incredible. Great advocates for us. No first lady has been supportive as well.

Uniquely, she believes maybe the top part of her legacy, I believe that they’ll be around for eight years, Governor and Dawn Moore. And the top of her priorities for her legacy, she wants the Preakness Festival to be a major part of her legacy that this becomes a national celebration similar to the Kentucky Derby Festival as well and have that in Maryland. So, they’re all about rejuvenating racing, rejuvenating the Preakness, and rejuvenating Baltimore’s Park Heights community as well. As I said, Bill Knauf is our president. He has assembled a great team of professionals. We have many national experts who are sports and entertainment professionals. Kevin O’Grady, who runs KO Productions, who has produced 11 Super Bowls, one Breeders’ Cup, and I think three Kentucky Derbies. So, he is an extraordinary person at event planning and event management. The Oakview Group, a very prominent sponsorship and marketing company also is on board.

They will handle all of our sponsorships and marketing. They handle Ascot. As a racing, they handle this. We will be their very first U.S. racing client and they’re very excited. We engaged Doug Perlman from Sports Media Advisors to negotiate our TV rights, which that’s been in the news. And Populist, as you know, who designed Belmont Park is our designer as well at Pimlico. A few a little bit probably non-traditional things. The Park Heights community is in a Renaissance program. They receive 10% of the profits of the Maryland Jockey Club. Park Heights leaders are represented on our board. This community has a deep sense of ownership of Pimlico and the Preakness. We think we own the Preakness. Somebody thinks they own the Preakness. If you go into Park Heights, they’ll tell you they own the Preakness and they’re very proud of the history and what goes on there.

So, we are part of a community renaissance. Additionally, Governor Moore has funded a strategic plan for all of Maryland’s equine industry. A 2023 study by the American Horse Council found that the size of Maryland’s equine industry is a $2.9 billion industry in our state. That’s the entire industry. 28,000 jobs, a $1.2 billion payroll. And uniquely, we have more horses per square mile than any other state. We have more than a hundred thousand horses in our state. No, we’re a small state, but that’s a lot of horses, more horses per square mile. And as we know, that helps with open space, agriculture and all the things that go along with that. This new strategic plan is being led by Kevin Atticks, who is Maryland’s secretary of agriculture. He has assembled a committee. The strategic plan is underway. We expect that final report in September. And we believe that that will give us great guidance on our entire equine industry, but more specifically our Thoroughbred racing and breeding industry.

So, Maryland has a bright future. The state has great infrastructure. The industry has been part of our state’s history and culture and legacy for generations. There are many multi-generational horsemen in the state - Graham Motion, the Merriman family. The important family farms in our state - the Ponds family, the Bowman family, the Golden family, the Boniface families. So, Maryland has great bones to continue racing and breeding. Fairhill and Laurel Park will have nearly 2,000 stalls for training. The Triple Crown, we have one Triple Crown race. There’s only three states that have them. So, we’re very proud that that’s important to our state as well. And we are the highest priority of Wes and Dawn Moore who want to make Preakness a bucket list event. And as you’ve seen some of the changes here that were announced yesterday, although the decision was made about a month ago, that NBC now will continue actually televising and broadcasting the Preakness.

We changed our date. We moved it back one week. NBC was very excited to move the days as well to Black Eyed Susan Day on Saturday and Preakness Day on Sunday.

Any four years out of six, that will be Memorial Day weekend. So people would have Monday for a travel day as well. But we think this will be a celebratory weekend and Baltimore will be an exciting place to be for the weekend. So, we know as those changes that three of the last five Derby winners have skipped the Preakness, including the last two. So, in our estimation to save the Triple Crown, you have to save the Preakness. We know what everyone else knows. The Triple Crown is critically important to our industry. That’s why NBC wanted this contract that moved it back one week. We think this will be very good for racing, and NBC agrees with us. So, we will have a full weekend of racing. So, as we move forward, the Mid-Atlantic will be critical to the national success of our industry. And we know we need to support regional racing and breeding.

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia all need to thrive. We look forward to working with The Jockey Club and chairman Dobson as they make regional racing and breeding programs a high priority for them as well. But within the Mid-Atlantic, Maryland will be the new shiny penny. We’ll have a new track for fans. We’ll have new stalls for horsemen. We’ll have new dorms for backstretch employees. Northview Stallion Station now stands two-time Maryland Bred Horse of the Year and Grade two winner post time. Country Life Farm and Spendthrift are bringing a new stallion to Maryland, a Country Life Farm and the Ponds family. That’ll be Provenance, who is by Into Mischief and Monomoy Girl. Same similar setup as Malibu Moon, beautifully bred horse with a short racing career, but a promising racing career. So hopefully we can have that happen again. We also agree with our breeders' programs with Colonial Downs and the Virginia Breeders Association and that association, we’re honoring each other’s breeding rights and breeding incentive programs has been helpful.

So again, we have a bright future. We have a rebuilt Pimlico. Racing will be fun and exciting. With a strong breeding incentive program, you’re going to want to be in Maryland. So, send your mares to Maryland in 27 for the excitement that’ll happen in 2029 and 30. Maryland has stepped up for the Preakness and the Triple Crown and the racing industry. $500 million worth of stepping up. The Triple Crown is one of our most cherished sporting events and clearly the most important in our industry. We look forward to working with New York and Kentucky to move the Triple Crown forward and watching it grow. Thank you very much for allowing me to be here this morning and to tell you all about the exciting things happening in Maryland.