Craig Duchossois talks to the Daily Herald during at Arlington Park Saturday August 14, 2021 in Arlington Heights. (Brian Hill | Staff Photographer)
Amid the pageantry of the final Arlington Million Day — a day to honor Dick Duchossois and his family for their contributions to horse racing — Duchossois’ son blamed not Arlington Park owner Churchill Downs Inc. but Illinois politicians for the planned destruction of the grand racing palace his father built.
Craig Duchossois, his father’s longtime right-hand man in family business matters, called Saturday’s tributes at the racetrack bittersweet and emotional after what he said has been the family’s “enjoyable but challenging” journey in Illinois racing and politics. His father, Arlington Park’s 99-year-old chairman emeritus, was at his Barrington Hills home, where he’s spent most of his time since the onset of the pandemic.
“I have no faith in our government in Illinois at all, including Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker. Springfield is a bigger swamp than Washington, if that’s possible,” Craig Duchossois said during an exclusive interview with the Daily Herald from his family’s grandstand suite.
Duchossois said Pritzker’s 2019 massive gambling expansion that awarded long-sought slots and table games to racetracks like Arlington came “too late.”
By then, Churchill Downs had already acquired a majority interest in nearby Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, and it soon declined to apply for the gambling positions at Arlington, which could have helped boost purse accounts for horse races.
“If they would’ve gotten their head out of the sand and done it 5 or 10 years earlier, whole different ballgame,” Duchossois said. “Who knows what would have happened then. But at least we would’ve been given the chance to compete fairly, and they didn’t allow that. And now they’re saying Churchill is at fault? That just doesn’t make any sense.”
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