HOT SPRINGS -- Horsemen at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort have routinely seemed at least content with their barn assignments. Now many sound delighted.
Track management has built a total of 14 barns in the last three years at an average cost of $1 million each, Oaklawn President Louis Cella said. Six new barns were built last year for this season, which begins Friday.
For some trainers, the old barns that remain are just fine.
Trainer Lynn Chleborad had 30 stalls last season in the former Barn 8, nearly half of which were recently torn down to help make way for construction of a new hotel and events center and expanded casino space. The remainder were renovated and renamed Bayakoa.
All of Oaklawn's barns, most visible to the east and southeast from the grandstand, are named after racehorses of national note.
For this season, Chleborad was assigned 30 stalls in the Exterminator barn, built years ago at an angle to fit a gap formed by the first turn and the 6-furlong chute.
"It's a wonderful barn," Chleborad said. "It's right by the track, right by the horse path to the track, right under the [6-furlong] starting gate. It's a really good barn. We love it."
That wasn't the case in Barn 8. Chleborad said cold winds from the north were thwarted by nothing but sheets of plastic, inadequate to cut the chill from her grooms, hot walkers, and exercise riders. Horses are famously cold-tolerant, but Chleborad said the plastic slapped by high winds at night would frighten them in their stalls.
"It was just as cold as it could be on the north side of the barn," Chleborad said. "It was miserable, just miserable."
Solid walls block the wind in Chleborad's new-to-her barn.
"Some of the barns had just outlived their lives," Cella said. "They were 50- or 60- or 70-years old. They had to be turned over. Barns are just like your house. Sometimes you need a new roof. Sometimes you just need to start over."
Cella said he asked Oaklawn veterans if they wanted to move into new barns. Responses varied.
"We asked Ron [Moquett], and he said, 'Hell no,' '' Cella said. "And I told him, in that case, we'd have to renovate from the inside out because it's falling apart, and that's what we did."
Moquett listed the advantages of his old, renovated barn named in honor of Count Fleet.
"It's proximity to the track, but it's also noise, easy access to bringing in grain, room to jog your horses to make sure they're sound," Moquett said. "There's lots of different things about it. Some people are superstitious if they know they've had good luck in it."
Moquett said he could think of only one thing he would add to his set-up.
"I would want to put about 5 acres around me so I could graze my horses," he said. "That's the only thing I would add. It's a great barn."
Cella said Moquett's reaction is common.
"We go to some of our old stand-by trainers who live with us year after year, and we say, 'Do you want to go to a new barn,' and they don't," Cella said. "The barns that they've been in, like Ron's barn, that's his home."
Trainer Chris Hartman is in his fourth season in Paseana, one of the first of the new barns.
"These are really good barns that they've put in," Hartman said. "The other barns, they were just old. They were dated, but these new ones are quality barns. They'll be here for a long time."
Hartman said he understood trainers' attachments to the older barns.
"Some people like to just put on their same old pair of pants, you know what I mean?" he said. "But these new barns are just great. They're just better. They've been built for the long haul. Those old barns can be high maintenance, but I think in my barn they've had to do next to nothing in the last three years. These are great barns. They did a hell of a job on them."
Sports on 01/20/2020