Stella Thayer’s first memory of what is now Tampa Bay Downs came when she was 11 years old, going there with a friend whose father ran the track at the time when it was known as Sunshine Park.
“As minors, we could not go in, so we stood on the roof of the car and watched the races,” said Thayer, now 85.
Mark Casse has a similar first memory. As a young teenager, Casse came to the track with his father, a trainer, but also was not allowed inside.
“I would come and my dad would park his truck at the eighth pole,” Casse said. “I would sit in the back, pick horses, he’d bet them, and bring me back food.”
On one of those trips, Casse remembers his father winning a $5,000 stakes race with a horse named Big Decision.
“It was one of my fondest memories because it was something I shared with my dad,” Casse said.
There have been decades worth of memories in racing since for Thayer and Casse, both of whom are Hall of Fame inductees, and both of whom have strong ties to Tampa Bay Downs.
This year, Tampa Bay Downs is marking its 100th anniversary. The track officially opened as Tampa Downs on Feb. 18, 1926, an opening day that reportedly was attended by Babe Ruth, baseball managers John McGraw and Bucky Harris, boxing great Jack Dempsey, and John Ringling of Ringling Bros. fame. The track has gone through multiple ownership groups, three name changes, and survived a fire in 1968.
Thayer’s family has been part of the track’s ownership since 1965, when her father, Chester, was part of a group that bought what was then called Sunshine Park. A year later, it was renamed Florida Downs and Turf Club. The track, which became Tampa Bay Downs in 1980, has remained in her family ever since.
Thayer and her brother, Hal Ferguson, have been the sole owners since 1986, when they won an auction with a bid of $16.2 million after dissolving a partnership with George Steinbrenner, who had joined the ownership group in 1980.
“It ultimately didn’t work out,” Thayer said when asked about working with Steinbrenner. “I’m very fond of the family. The children live locally. I know them, respect them. I think we’ve had good personal relationships.”
Thayer said one of her family’s priorities was making sure the racing surfaces were safe and fair. In the spring of 1997, Thayer announced plans for the installation of a seven-furlong turf course with a quarter-mile chute. Ground was broken on May 14, 1997, the grass was planted Sept. 9, and the course was completed the following spring.
“We want to respect the surfaces and do them as well as we possibly can to be safe, and that’s where we spend a lot of time and focus, and we have a very dedicated staff that cares about that,” Thayer said.
Casse has brought some of his best turf horses to race at Tampa, including Tepin, the Breeders’ Cup Mile winner of 2015 and champion female turf horse. She began her 2016 campaign with two stakes wins at Tampa before going to Royal Ascot and cementing her legacy as a Hall of Fame horse with a victory in the Queen Anne.
World Approval, another Breeders’ Cup winner for Casse, was a multiple stakes winner at Tampa. And just last year, Nitrogen made Tampa a stop as part of her campaign that ended with an Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old filly.
“Tampa has been a big part of my life,” said Casse, who owns a farm and training center in Ocala. “They love horse racing. It’s fun to race there because everything is so close. I would call it a mini-Saratoga. It has a wonderful turf course. Over the years, I’ve taken many of our good turf horses there.”
:: Get the Inside Track with the FREE DRF Morning Line Email Newsletter. Subscribe now.
Other horsemen have followed suit. Trainers such as Chad Brown, Graham Motion, Shug McGaughey, Miguel Clement, and his late father, Christophe Clement, have had an increased presence over the years, utilizing the Tampa turf.
Tampa has two Kentucky Derby prep races, the Sam F. Davis and Tampa Bay Derby. In 2007, Street Sense won the Tampa Bay Derby and Kentucky Derby. In 2010, Super Saver was third in the Tampa Bay Derby, two starts before winning the roses in Louisville.
Casse said he will be at Tampa on Saturday, which also happens to be his 65th birthday, with starters in both of the $100,000 turf stakes run on the card.
If there’s a knock on Tampa, it’s the purse money. While revenue from the track’s poker room does go toward purses, Tampa’s purse structure is still on the low end of what winter tracks offer. The state has provided funding, though most of its subsidies are reserved for Florida-breds.
“You would always like to be better. We certainly aspire to have better purses,” Thayer said. “We’ve been supported by the state. We’re very appreciative of that, and our ambition is to keep going and keep getting better.”
Thayer said her goal in operating Tampa “has always been to respect horse racing as the athletic endeavor that it is, which I feel may not be appreciated by many people because we’re so far removed from the agrarian society where people were more familiar with horses. So, I think just understanding what a horse does as an athlete and what the jockeys do as athletes and what the trainer contends with – it’s a viable sport in my mind.”
The viability of racing in Florida has become a topic due to the issue of decoupling, which would no longer require a racetrack to continue live racing in order to maintain its casino license. This is a bigger issue at Gulfstream Park, where management has pushed for decoupling.
Thayer said she plans to keep Tampa Bay operating as a racetrack.
“Our main objective is to continue live racing in the area,” Thayer said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in South Florida. We want to be supportive of live racing in general, and certainly the breeding industry is important to the state, as is the fact we are the ecosystem for the training of horses during the winter. That is certainly something we don’t want to lose.”
Thayer also made one other thing clear regarding her racetrack.
“We are not trying to sell the track,” she said.
Tampa was to mark its 100th anniversary with an autograph signing on Friday featuring many retired Hall of Fame jockeys, including Steve Cauthen, Laffit Pincay Jr., Angel Cordero Jr., Pat Day, Chris McCarron, and Jean Cruguet. On Saturday, the current group of active riders at Tampa will have an autograph signing from noon-2 p.m. on the first floor of the grandstand.
On Wednesday, the actual 100th anniversary of the track opening, patrons who attend the races will receive a season pass for the 2026-27 meet.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.