Horse-racing organizer gets national attention

There were a few times last summer when Janis Schoepf could almost hear the theme song from “Rocky” playing.

About four months before the 2010 Northwest Montana Fair, the tough-as-nails Kalispell horsewoman stepped into the ring with a formidable task: restart horse racing at the fair after a five-year hiatus.

She heard the naysayers whisper, “She’ll never get it done.” And that just fueled her motivation all the more.

Schoepf has been around horse racing her entire life, but coming at it from the management side was an eye-opener.

“I seriously don’t think I slept for four months,” she said. “Ten to 15 times a day I’d hear, ‘What are you gonna do about this?’”

In the thick of preparations last summer, Schoepf said the effort was “countless hours for a passion.”

Schoepf got her come-from-behind Rocky Balboa-style victory after the numbers were in. She and a band of faithful friends, volunteers and local business owners had successfully restored a time-honored event that had been a part of the Northwest Montana Fair for 104 years. Spiraling insurance costs and borderline profitability had prompted the county to suspend racing in 2006.

Two days of racing brought in more than 10,000 spectators, and got much of the credit for fair attendance numbers that were up 56 percent over 2009. More than $101,000 was bet over those two days, with roughly $100,000 paid out to winning racers.

“When all was said and done I literally collapsed,” Schoepf said. “It was total exhaustion. I have a new appreciation for the management side.”

It wasn’t just county officials who took note of Schoepf and her team’s accomplishment.

A couple of months ago she got a call, out of the blue, from a guy who she thought wanted advice on how to start a small race track in Oklahoma. She told him point-blank: “It’s like everything else in life; you get off your ass and do it.”

Afterward she Googled the guy’s name. It was Todd Gralla, director of equestrian services for Populous, a global company that creates some of the biggest equine venues in the world. He told her how impressed he was with the numbers the horse-racing event had generated in its first year back in Kalispell. Apparently the company tracks that kind of information very closely, she said.

Then Gralla told her he liked her candidness and asked if she wanted to be a panelist for the Race Track Industry Program annual symposium at The University of Arizona. The program is the only one of its kind, and its prestigious symposium is world-renowned.

Schoepf was one of three panelists who spoke on the topic of diversification and revenue generation through the use of partnerships. Her fellow panelists’ biographies read like a “who’s who” in the equine business, including the vice president of business development for Global Spectrum Group, the largest manager of equine sponsorship money in the world.

With a lifetime of horse-racing experience — she trains race horses, her father was involved in horse racing and her two brothers were jockeys — she brought a grassroots perspective to the panel.

“What they wanted to know from me was how to make it work, so I told them,” she said matter-of-factly. “I make no bones that I learned some lessons. There needs to be camaraderie between the horsemen and management for it to work.”

The topic was geared at learning how race tracks that don’t have a video gaming component can survive and be viable.

Horse racing in Montana has suffered in the last decade. Several counties shut down their racing programs largely because of skyrocketing insurance costs for jockeys.

Flathead County cited a loss of $10,000 per day of racing when it decided in 2006 to suspend racing, first for a year and then indefinitely. At the time, several people told the Fair Board they believed if the fair would improve its accounting practices, the profitability of racing wouldn’t be in doubt. They pushed for the board to be more creative in finding funding partners for the event.

Initially the return of horse racing to Kalispell was expected to be a joint effort between the All Breed Turf Club and Blackfeet Tribe, but when that didn’t materialize Schoepf, her good friend Deb Cunnington and a few others took the ball and ran with it. The races were privately funded, and Schoepf marveled at the commitment from the local business community.

When, at the last minute, Schoepf realized she’d forgotten to get the $30,000 “bank” for the race tellers, insurance agent Bob Herron arranged to have Glacier Bank supply a short-term loan. In appreciation, Schoepf and a volunteer manually inserted a full-page advertisement for Glacier Bank into the racing programs.

NOW THAT Schoepf and her team have shown what can be done, she believes it’s time for the county to once again make a financial commitment to horse racing in the Flathead. She traveled to Helena on Saturday to meet with the state Board of Horse Racing for the racing dates hearing that maps out where and when horse racing will be held this year in Montana. She applied for two days of racing at the Northwest Montana Fair.

Schoepf hopes to have a board representative come to Kalispell to meet with the Fair Board and county commissioners about how to proceed with racing.

Though the stables at the county fairgrounds are in need of renovation, the Kalispell facility last year was the only track in the region available for training race horses on a year-round basis. That in itself is a revenue source for the county, Schoepf noted, adding that those who use the barns routinely have pumped their own money into the maintenance of the buildings.

“I think we were very beneficial to the county,” she said of the race effort, “but now I feel the county needs to bring something to the table.”

Schoepf doesn’t know if she wants to carry the load this year without county support. She’d like some time to herself to train her 2-year-old horses that recently arrived from California. She’s running them through the snow to get a jump on spring training.

In an equine world that’s gone high-tech, with computers monitoring a race horse’s every move and intake of nutrition, Montana seems far removed from that kind of training.

“We still have to train in the elements,” Schoepf said.

She alludes once again to the “Rocky” movie series she “grew up on,” where a fighter against all odds still can win, and does it with heart.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com