Starting in the mid-1960s, Billy Johnston presided over harness meetings at Sportsman’s Park at a time when the Cubs didn’t play home games at night and the Blackhawks didn’t televise their home games.
Johnston filled the void by making his track one of Chicago’s most popular after dark sports and entertainment destinations.
His father, William Johnston Sr., became president of Sportsman’s National Jockey Club (NJC) in 1947 when it was a thoroughbred track and in 1949 added harness racing, which had made its pari-mutuel wagering debut in Illinois three years earlier at Maywood Park. Overnight Sportsman’s became one of the nation’s top harness tracks.
Johnston built on the harness racing foundation laid by his father, who retired as NJC president in 1967. Stormy Bidwill took over as president and focused on the thoroughbreds, while Johnston was president of the Fox Valley and Chicago Downs harness meetings and went on to win recognition as the most influential and innovative individual in Illinois harness racing and a national leader in the sport.
Johnston, 84, died March 27 at his winter home in Key Largo, Florida. A longtime resident of Hinsdale and Burr Ridge, he had been diagnosed with brain cancer late last fall.
In 1977, Johnston put together the ownership group that secured a long-term lease at Maywood. That group joined with the family of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to buy Balmoral Park in 1987. Johnston’s management team also was the longtime overseer of the Illinois State Fair harness meetings at DuQuoin and Springfield after they launched pari-mutuel betting.
“Billy probably was as smart a businessman as anybody I ran into in the horse racing business and I always found him to be a good person to have in racing,” said former Gov. Jim Edgar, a standardbred and thoroughbred owner and breeder before and after he became the state’s chief executive.
“Billy was pragmatic. If he was dealing with the other tracks or horsemen you knew up front that he wasn’t going to give away money but you also knew he’d be willing to compromise.”
Although the advent of nonstop sports telecasts and the introduction of riverboat casino gambling caused harness attendance and betting to significantly decline following its heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, Johnston’s emphasis on high quality racing remained steadfast.
Every year the American-National series of races lured North America’s finest horses to Sportsman’s until it terminated harness racing after the 1997 meeting, and then to Balmoral from 1998 until the cessation of racing there after the 2015 meeting. The same was true of Maywood’s Windy City Pace that he inaugurated in 1983.
“Billy always was a huge personality and always was searching for ways to improve his tracks and the experience for the fans,” said Cook County Circuit Judge Lorna Propes, a member of the Illinois Racing Board for 17 years and its chairman for three years.
“I can’t think of anyone who can take his place,” Racing Board member Tom McCauley said. “No question, he was very, very good for Illinois racing. He was an innovator, always thinking ahead of the curve. He did an awful lot.”
En route to the top of Sportsman’s harness hierarchy, Johnston dabbled in owning, training and driving before and after his 1957 graduation from the University of Miami in Florida and completion of Coast Guard service in 1961.
The record book has him winning 20 of 153 races between 1958 and 1966 but he probably drove earlier because prior to 1958 only drivers with 25 or more starts had their results published. For most of his life he continued to own and breed standardbreds and he also owned thoroughbreds, partnering with Phil Langley in many of these ventures.
“I started working with Billy in 1965 and for the next 50 years we had a sometimes contentious but very successful relationship,” Langley said. “In my opinion, the success of harness racing in Illinois was due to Billy’s promotional instincts and time after time coming up with new ideas. He brought the trifecta, superfecta and other exotic bets to Chicago. When he went to national meetings he was outspoken but he got along with all the big names in racing.”
Indicative of the role they played nationally, Johnston served 45 years as a United States Trotting Association director and Langley was the organization’s president for 13 years.
Perhaps their most significant Illinois achievement was introducing inter-track betting and making it a gateway to off-track betting.
They also brought world class racing events to Sportsman’s, Maywood and Balmoral. In 1984 Maywood was the site of the inaugural Breeders Crown 2-year-old filly pace; in 1985 Sportsman’s was the site of the inaugural Breeders Crown aged trot; in 1988 Balmoral became the first North American track to host the World Driving Championship — luring top drivers from 14 countries — and in 1996 again was the host track.
At DuQuoin, they inaugurated the state’s richest harness race, the World Trotting Derby in 1981, to replace the Hambletonian, after it moved to the Meadowlands. The $700,000 purse for the 1991 World Trotting Derby is an Illinois record for harness racing.
Before “entertainment” became a sports world buzzword Johnston was holding prerace concerts at Sportsman’s starring the likes of The Captain and Tenille, Ike and Tina Turner and Blood Sweat and Tears. In 1979 Muhammad Ali came to Maywood to win a charity exhibition race. In 1988 the Great Midwest Fair was reinaugurated at Balmoral.
McCauley is an attorney who represented Arlington International Racecourse when he met Johnston in 1983 and they often were on opposite sides of the bargaining table. “He was always a straight shooter in negotiations,” recalled the racing commissioner who stopped working for Arlington in the early ’90s.
Lester McKeever was a member of Associates Racing Association, the first all-black organization to conduct a racing meeting in North America, when he and Johnston crossed paths.
“Associates started at Washington Park and when it burned down we moved to Maywood, getting a lease from the Galt family, and then the Johnstons got involved,” McKeever said.
“Billy made the purchase to get a long-term lease with the Galts and he invited me to become part of the (ownership) group along with Pat Flavin, Dick Roggeveen and Sid Anton. Billy became a wonderful friend. I admired him for his long knowledge in the racing industry and I thank him for giving me the opportunity to share in that experience at Maywood and later at Balmoral. As a track operator, Billy was par excellence. He wasn’t always easy to get along with but he was a man of integrity.”
Johnston stepped back from daily operations at his tracks during the past 10 years but remained atop the chain of command. Earlier his sons, John, and William III (Duke), had succeeded him as presidents of Balmoral and Maywood, respectively.
In 2008 the family dynasty that contributed so much to racing for so many years was forced out of the sport.
Federal investigators taped a phone conversation between John Johnston and Lon Monk, the former chief of staff for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Johnston implored Monk to ask Blagojevich to sign the impact fee extension bill that the legislature had passed so Balmoral, Maywood, Arlington and Hawthorne Race Course could use the fee levied on the state’s four most profitable riverboat casinos at the time to bolster their purse accounts. Monk responded by trying to shake down Johnston for a $100,000 contribution to Blagojevich’s campaign.
Although the contribution was never made, the extension law eventually was signed, prompting the four casinos to sue Balmoral and Maywood on civil racketeering charges and they were awarded approximately $78 million, forcing the tracks into chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2014 and out of racing permanently in 2016.
In addition to his sons, Johnston is survived by his wife, Jane; a daughter, Heather; a sister, Jewell Howell; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic no services are planned.
Neil Milbert is a former Tribune sports writer.
