For the eighth time that year, Charles Town Races raised its purses, bringing them to an average of $52,500 a day – “That’s the sort of money that many of our horsemen could never before have imagined,” said Dick Watson, president of the Charles Town chapter of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association – while the purse underpayment for the year increased to nearly $1.5 million.

Revenues from video lottery terminals (VLTs) were providing the foundation for all of it.

Purse increases were expected for each month through the end of the year, and races were regularly drawing full fields with half a dozen also-eligibles. The changes lured horsemen back to the Charles Town, W.Va., oval who had left in previous seasons, including Jeff Runco, Charles Town’s leading trainer for four consecutive seasons in the early 1990s.

• Trainer Paddy Neilson announced his retirement from a long career as an amateur jockey after a fall at Oxmoor that September in Kentucky. The Pennsylvania resident rode in a then-record 21 Maryland Hunt Cups, winning three (Haffaday in 1968, Burnmac in 1974, and Uncle Merlin in 1989) and hung up his tack at age 56 with 95 National Steeplechase Association wins. 
  
  
• Turf writer Raleigh Burroughs died Sept. 25, three weeks shy of his 97th birthday. Raised near Pimlico, he soared to the top of his profession as a writer and editor, even though his parents’ financial plight forced him to quit high school (Baltimore’s Polytechnic Institute) before graduation. During the height of his popularity in the 1960s, he became a national celebrity in the racing world with weekly columns in the Middleburg Chronicle (now The Chronicle of the Horse), and was editor of the Maryland Horse for eight years and Turf and Sport Digest for 19. Later, he wrote an autobiography titled Horses, Burroughs and Other Animals, as well as a biography of Fasig-Tipton’s CEO Humphrey S. Finney, Fair Exchange.
  Burroughs was selected for the National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor in 2015.
  
  
• Smarten, who joined Windfields Farm’s stallion roster in 1980 and stood his entire career at the Chesapeake City farm (later Northview Stallion Station), was retired at 22 due to decreased fertility. A Maryland-bred champion at 3 in 1979, the year he won four derbies (Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and American) in succession, he was described by trainer Woody Stephens as “a tough sucker. . . He could get off the plane and just run anywhere they put up the money.”
  The son of Cyane was a hit as a sire from the start (he was Maryland’s leading freshman sire and fourth nationally), and he sired the likes of Canadian champion 3-year-old filly and Broodmare of the Year Classy ’n Smart (dam of champion Dance Smartly and Grade 1 winner Smart Strike).
  
  
• North Carolina-bred G H’s Pleasure set a 6-furlong course record of 1:09 4⁄5 in winning the $100,000 Kentucky Cup Turf Dash at Kentucky Downs. Bred by Dr. and Mrs. John Montgomery Bauer, the son of Foolish Pleasure had been through many hands in his six years, selling for $18,000 at the Keeneland September yearling sale, twice through 2-year-old auctions, and then when dropped into the claiming ranks. His owners – father/ son Tony Canonie Sr. and Jr., and partners Kenneth Hoffman and E. Roy – claimed him for $14,000 in May 1996 at Arlington Park.
  G H’s Pleasure earned the majority of his $356,293 for the partners, who never risked him for a tag after 1996 and ran him in 28 stakes. His final win came in the Hialeah Sprint Championship Handicap in April 1999.