Fears that the Fraser Downs season would be cancelled is eased with a rejigged schedule, but its long-term future remains in doubt.

In an effort to calm troubled waters, a horse-racing industry management committee spearheaded by the provincial government issued a letter of reassurance Thursday outlining a three-pronged approach to salvaging fall and winter harness racing at Fraser Downs racetrack in Cloverdale.

The letter, which was to go out to tracks everywhere, nixed the idea of forming a partnership with the harnessracing industry in Alberta, slightly rejigged the schedule at Fraser Downs by adding four days near the beginning of the season and deleting two just before Christmas and promised that talks aimed at resurrecting the 2011 season will begin immediately.

But everyone involved admitted the industry is facing difficult circumstances.

“Many of our fans are getting older and they are not coming to the racetrack as they used to,” said Howard Blank, a vice-president at the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation which operates Fraser Downs.

“The new generation has not come on board.”

“This is an industry which is in pretty difficult circumstances,” said Derek Sturko, an assistant deputy minister in Rich Coleman’s ministry of housing and social development and chairman of a horse-racing industry management committee that was struck last February to deal with the troubled times.

“It’s an industry that has been in decline for many, many years.”

A recent announcement that Great Canadian was reducing the number of racing days at Fraser Downs this fall by 14 days – which amounts to about a 38-per-cent reduction – and putting the 2011 season on hold until it could review the situation sent shock waves through the industry and prompted predictions that Fraser Downs is on its last legs.

It didn’t help, too, that general manager Chuck Keeling, a 38-year-old bright light and the grandson of racetrack founder Jim Keeling Sr., recently resigned to pursue entrepreneurial interests outside the industry. No replacement has been announced.

On Thursday, Blank attempted to quell suspicions that the track is about to close.

“It’s not a matter of big business cutting racing because if that was the case, we would have stopped racing years ago. It has not been a viable product for us, but we are committed to horse racing.”

The committee and Great Canadian briefly contemplated the idea of liaising with the harness-racing industry in Alberta and coordinating race dates so that there was no duplication.

Because of negative reaction, the notion has been dropped. “There is no sense going where people don’t want to go,” said Sturko.

Earlier this year, the idea was floated of combining harnessracing at Fraser Downs and thoroughbred racing at Hastings Racecourse into one facility. Both have been struggling. Blank said Great Canadian, which runs both, is scheduling races at both so there is no overlap that could dilute crowds at either. However, he denied this is a move to start the merging of the two tracks. “There is nothing in the works to merge the two tracks.”

As one hopeful sign on a bleak horizon, Sturko said attendance at Hastings has been up recently, a sign that some of the marketing efforts there are starting to pay off.

But part of the problem at both facilities is that young people don’t understand how to bet.

“It’s not a simple industry in which to bet,” said Sturko. “There’s all kinds of ratings systems and so that’s another challenge. People come and they get confused.”

Blank said the younger generation has little patience for racetrack formalities that are steeped in tradition.

“The world has changed. The new generation that you are always hoping will come and enjoy your product are into now, now, now, downloading whatever they want to see now. Everything is instantaneous whereas horse racing is the grand old dame where there is quite a bit of time between races, there is a parade and there are formalities.”

But he hopes that reducing the number of racing days will mean bigger turnouts on those days, creating a buzz at the track.

He and Sturko said they are determined to find solutions.

Sturko expects that an announcement on the 2011 season at Fraser Downs will be made before the end of September.

– Yvonne Zacharias is a reporter with Langley Advance’s

sister paper, the Vancouver Sun

• This is one in a series of related stories you can find in our online edition about this issue.