Sunday, March 28, 1999
Race fans: Name lacks flavor of Jim Beam
But a record 21,028 turn out anyway
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FLORENCE — The Gallery Furniture.com Stakes. Sure doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? But that didn't stop a record number of fans — 21,028 — from turning out for the big race at Turfway Park on Saturday.
It did, however, make for some interesting conversation.
As fans packed in their coolers and lawn chairs and lit their cigars, they were surrounded by the race's new name — on banners, sweat shirts, hats, cups and even printed on paper and pasted on the grass.
“Furniture gallery, uh, gallery furniture,” said Brandon Wilkens of Alexandria as he struggled to remember the name. “And what's that ".com' thing? Everything is something .com now.
“It makes it sound so corporate.”
Others had trouble too, but tried hard to remember. Was it the galaxy something? Run for the recliner? Was there something about a sofa?
Some said it was just too long and refused to call it anything but the Jim Beam Stakes, what the race had been known as for the 17 years Jim Beam was its sponsor.
But the name didn't stop Mr. Wilkens and his friends from having a good time. Some of them go to the track monthly.
“I'm a gambling man,” said Keith Shelton of Alexandria as he watched one of the early races.
Sid Quinn of Kenwood said he's been going to Turfway since it opened in 1958 and the big race was called the Spiral Stakes.
“I think (the name) is too commercial,” he said. “I've never seen a race named after a furniture store.
“But that's where racing is going now, commercial. It's a little disappointing.”
Some fans said they could see a connection between horse racing and bourbon, but racing and furniture?
“I can't think of anything other than glue,” said Wayne Pinson of Mount Washington.
But friend Dan Varner of Anderson Township said the new sponsor was doing a good job selling himself, the race and his furniture store.
“People don't generally care who the sponsor is as long as they keep having it,” he said.
But there were some who were adamant about the name change, including Scott Kresser of Edgewood.
“As a horse race guy, you can't say, "We're going to the Gallery Furniture.com Stakes,'” he said. “It's too long.”
The only chance the name has is The Gallery, his friend Tony Bezold of Covington said.
Mr. Kresser chimed in, “Yeah, sofas aren't catchy and they're not hip.”
And you can't drink them either, Mr. Bezold said.
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