Wonderful Hialeah racetrack continues to crumble, inching its way toward death. It sits empty, its last race run in the spring of 2001, and forgotten. There is the occasional mention of the familiar foes in Florida racing squabbling over whether or not Hialeah should be given another permit to hold a meet management has no intention of holding and the very faint hope of slot machines has at least staved off the wrecking ball. Considering the current climate and situation, there is little reason to believe this racetrack will rise again.

There are dozens of reasons and problems, many of them complicated, that things are the way they are, but somewhere near the top of the list is indifference. And that's the real shame of the Hialeah story. Why this sport is willing to take one of its treasures and let it be tossed into the trash without a fight?

Hialeah should be saved and it should be given a chance to prosper. That will not be easy, but this basic and simple premise must be and deserves to be conventional wisdom among a sport that too often chooses the easy way out of complicated situations rather than trying to do the right thing.

The list of American racetracks that deserve iconic status is a short one and Hialeah is right near the top. It is unparalleled in American racing for its sheer beauty and grace. It rivals any track from a historical perspective, at least through the glory years that made it the winter home of hundreds of great horses, from War Admiral to Citation to Seattle Slew, and the famous stables they called home. Hialeah was special.

It was that way until demographics and dates wars started to work in favor of Gulfstream Park. The money and the tourists started to drift north toward Gulfstream and away from the working class areas that neighbored Hialeah. Consistently able to produce higher betting handles and, therefore, more tax revenue for the State of Florida, Gulfstream eventually locked in on the lucrative winter dates and would not let go. Once Hialeah was let with the leftovers, the April-May dates, when the good horses and the tourists had departed, the fight was all but over.

Hialeah's predicament grew worse when the dates were deregulated in Florida and Gulfstream and Calder teamed up to divide the calendar among themselves. Hialeah was left only with the option of trying to run head on with one of those tracks and track owner John J. Brunetti instead chose to stay dark in 2002 and 2003, avoiding what would have been certain disaster.

Nothing much has happened since and there is little to suggest that any hope is in the offing. The political problems, the intransigent attitudes that helped create this mess, Gulfstream's understandable unwillingness to relinquish any of the winter dates and Brunetti's stubbornness are not about to change. The only way to make this work is to blow everything up and start over again.

As long as Brunetti owns Hialeah and holds a permit to race there, nothing good will ever happen. It has been proven time and time again that he and officials from Gulfstream and Calder are incapable of a compromise that suits everyone. But how long can Brunetti afford to sit on a property that is producing no revenue? Sooner or later, he will have to grow tired of losing money, especially once it becomes apparent that slots are not going to happen in Florida any time soon. His problems may be complicated by the fact that, in 1988, Hialeah was determined to be eligible for designation at a National Historical Landmark. It doesn't appear that that alone can prevent Brunetti or anyone else from tearing the track down, but it wouldn't be done without a lot of fuss and protest.

Should Brunetti ever part with Hialeah, it would take someone with some vision, deep pockets and a sense of the importance of preserving racing history to step in and take over. The ideal person, of course, would be Frank Stronach, who could operate Hialeah as a means of complimenting Gulfstream's meet.

It is awful presumptuous of me, I realize, to tell Stronach how to spend his money, especially on such a dicey economic proposition, but there are ways this could actually work.

Hialeah, done right, has an awful lot of attractive and practical qualities. Imagine a three-week meet right in the middle of the heart of the racing season, a Keeneland of South Florida, if you will. Hialeah could offer a short meet, with quality racing and high purses that horsemen would love, particularly since they like to train and race over the track's top notch dirt and turf courses. Forget about the post-Gulfstream meet. No one is interested in a Hialeah that is running minor league racing.

With no competition from Gulfstream and with top quality racing, Hialeah's handle would be extraordinary. It wouldn't even matter if on-track attendance would be low since the simulcasting figures would be huge. Then again, Hialeah might just be an on-track hit again. All that stuff about it being in an unsafe neighborhood is nonsense. People love nostalgia in this country and tourists might just flock to the grand old track if they knew that, at least for three weeks, things wold be back to the way they once were.

With Gulfstream in charge and if it could get Calder to cooperate, certainly laws could be changed to allow Hialeah to stay open year-round for simulcasting. That might not pull in overwhelming daily handle figures, but the daily grind of simulcasting dollars would certainly soften the economic bite of racing live for a few days.

A healthy Hialeah could even help Gulfstream have a better meet. Though the addition of Palm Meadows this year went along way toward solving the horse shortage problem that plagued Gulfstream in 2002, it would be a nice plus to have even more stalls available at Hialeah, which is said to be one of the best places on Earth to train. And Hialeah's meet could consist largely of grass racing, which could take a lot of the burden off of Gulfstream's overused course, which tends to get pretty torn up at times.

If Stronach isn't interested, then find someone else. This will not be easy and it might not make perfect sense from a bottom-line perspective, but it should be done. To do otherwise, is to disrespect the history of this sport and a racetrack that was too special to die of intolerable neglect.