Churchill Downs Incorporated | Horse Racing Free Tips

Report: Arlington Employees Receive Layoff Notices

According to a report in Chicago's Daily Herald newspaper, Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI), the owner of Arlington Park, has sent official notices to employees informing them they will be laid off 14 days after the final day of the meet, which is Sept. 25.

CDI has not committed to racing beyond the end of this meet and has put the track up for sale. The layoff notices are a discouraging development after CDI applied for 2022 Illinois racing dates. A date request is not binding and does not have to mean that CDI intends to keep the track open.

The Daily Herald obtained a copy of a memo sent to employees by Arlington President Tony Petrillo, which read: “As it was announced earlier this year the Arlington Park Racecourse, LLC has been placed on the market for sale which will result in the closure of Arlington International Racecourse. Consistent with these plans, employment separations presently are expected to begin on or about Sept. 25, 2021. The entire Racecourse facility is being permanently closed in conjunction with the expectation of the sale.”

Nick Micaletti, the business agent for Teamsters Local 727, which represents 50 Arlington employees, including valets and the starting gate crew, held out hope someone would come in, buy the track and keep it open for racing.

“It's a reality now, whereas before it was, well, hopefully somebody comes in and buys it and does the right things and helps Illinois horse racing,” Micaletti told the Daily Herald.

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CDI Reportedly Asks for ’22 Illinois Dates Application

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton

Two months before Arlington International Racecourse is scheduled to run what is feared to be the historic track's final race, Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), the gaming corporation that owns the up-for-sale landmark, has reportedly requested an application for 2022 race dates from the Illinois Racing Board.

But as columnist Jim O'Donnell of the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago put it in his Friday scoop of this story, “What the carnivorous CDI will do with the application remains to be seen.”

With a July 30 deadline looming to apply for next year's dates, this pull-the-papers move could just end up being a gambit to make sure CDI has various contingencies lined up.

Requesting an application doesn't mean a track owner has to actually file for dates.

Nor does it mean CDI intends to file for dates at Arlington. The corporation could be eyeballing some other still-secret Illinois location.

Nevertheless, this news is likely to kindle hope (perhaps of the false variety) that Arlington could survive the wrecking ball–at least for another few race meets while CDI reaps the benefits of entitlements related to live racing licensure, like off-track betting and advance-deposit wagering.

O'Donnell also notes that CDI could also be using the move as a ploy to replenish its “depleted goodwill” with regulators and elected officials in Illinois. This could come in the form of using another season or two at Arlington as an olive branch while simultaneously pursuing bigger-picture casino endeavors at two lucrative locations where CDI wants to expand its gaming footprint in and near Chicago.

It was last July 30 that Bill Carstanjen, the chief executive officer of CDI, first outlined the corporation's desire to rid itself of Chicago's premier Thoroughbred venue. In February, CDI put the 326-acre property up for sale. It has since attracted four known bidders, only one of whom has publicly disclosed an interest in keeping Arlington operational as a Thoroughbred track.

TDN emailed Arlington's president Tony Petrillo on Saturday to ask if either Arlington or CDI actually intended to file a 2022 dates application. No response was received prior to Sunday's deadline for this column.

Carstanjen also was silent when asked by the Daily Herald to explain what was going on.

For the latest rundown in this ongoing saga, it's best to absorb O'Donnell's full column here.

But the two biggest points that O'Donnell brings up relative to continued racing in Illinois are:

1.) The possibility that CDI could be planning to either run a race meet itself, or partner with and/or enter into some sort of lease arrangement with a new owner (because large-parcel developments such as this take years to happen, such as when CDI sold Hollywood Park in 2006, and racing continued there under different management until 2013).

2.) What will Hawthorne Race Course do? O'Donnell reported that Arlington's rival racetrack 35 miles to the south is “preparing two dates applications predicated upon what Churchill does. If CDI or a nominee request a summer Thoroughbred meet, [Hawthorne] will simply repeat their spring-and-fall Thoroughbreds of 2021, bookending a midyear [Standardbred] season. If CDI completely exits the 2022 Illinois racing frame, Hawthorne will apply to run a summer Thoroughbred season with harness racing in the spring and fall.”

Fundraiser for Fallen Rider

Crooked River Roundup in central Oregon is about as far off the horse racing grid as you can get in America. Yet racegoers there passed the hat to raise a reported $3,500 July 14 upon learning they had witnessed the death of jockey Eduardo Gutierrez-Sosa in the first race of the meet when his mount collided with the inner rail and flipped the 29-year-old rider headfirst into the infield.

According to published reports, racetrackers gave another $16,000 the next night to help Gutierrez-Sosa's widow and three children (ages four, eight and one in high school). The outpouring of aid continued via donation bins in the betting area over the weekend.

The fundraising effort has now gone digital, with this GoFundMe page to help pay for funeral costs having already brought in another $18,000 as of Sunday afternoon.

Gutierrez-Sosa rode both Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses, primarily on the mixed-meet circuit in the Pacific Northwest. The Mexican native who was a longtime Oregon resident was remembered by friends in this televised KTVZ tribute as an always-smiling family man who was easily identified on horseback for his distinctively pink riding attire.

The Quarter Horse that Gutierrez-Sosa rode in his final race, Godfather Advice (who walked off the track after the accident), was a 2-year-old Quarter Horse maiden trained by his wife, Rosa Rodriguez. According to members of the backstretch community, Rodriguez was standing at trackside after saddling her horse to watch the running of the race.

“She was on the race track when it happened,” Jennifer Abraham told KTVZ. “My heart breaks for Rosa that that's her last time with him. I hope she cherishes the memories they had together.”

Crooked River Roundup (aka Prineville Turf Club) annually hosts a four-date, under-the-lights meet on the four-track Oregon summer fairs circuit. It was questionable whether the racing there would even continue there this year after the track was forced to cancel its meet in 2020 because of the pandemic.

There was also some sentiment about canceling the rest of the meet after Wednesday's accident. But after abandoning the July 14 card following the second race, the decision was made to continue racing as scheduled Thursday through Saturday in honor of Gutierrez-Sosa.

“It's hard for some of us,” Dustie Crystal, one of his backstretch friends, told KTVZ. “Some of us [just wanted] to go home and not have the rest of the race meet. But we all know that, Sosa being the person he is, he'd want us to stay.”

When racing resumed Thursday night, KTVZ reported that the entire jockey colony was wearing some form of pink to honor Gutierrez-Sosa.

“It's hard to describe, but I feel like I lost my brother,” jockey Jose Figueroa told KTVZ. “We're going to ride for him.”

Nebraska the New Wild West?

No fewer than five new racetracks were proposed at last Friday's Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission meeting. According to published reports, no action was taken on any of the applications, which were triggered by the passage of a trio of ballot initiatives last year that authorized casinos at licensed horse race tracks.

The gold rush-like flurry of proposals were tied to new locations in Bellevue, York, Norfolk, North Platte and Gering. According to the Sioux City Journal, the most lucrative sites are considered to be in the eastern part of the state near the Iowa border.

A standing-room crowd at that July 16 meeting generated plenty of opposition from Thoroughbred horsemen, who fear that a sudden glut of racing venues will only water down Nebraska's recently resurgent racing product.

According to the Journal, Lynne McNally, the executive vice president of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protection Association, said that new tracks in places like Bellevue and York “will gut the purse structure.”

The Norfolk Daily News reported that Garald Wollesen, president of the NHBPA, said at the meeting that, “Building up casinos should build up the racing industry, not line the pockets of others.”

Robert Moser Jr., the former president of the NHBPA, testified that if both the Bellevue and York proposals are approved, it would put four tracks within 100 miles of each other on the eastern edge of the state. According to the Journal, he said that the only place in the country where that exists is in New York, in an area with 20 million people.

Nebraska has six racetracks that are currently eligible for racino licensure. Fonner Park in Grand Island races the only extended Thoroughbred season, with other limited Thoroughbred dates at Omaha, Lincoln and Columbus. Quarter Horse mini-meets occur at South Sioux City and Hastings.

Major purse upswing at Timonium

At last Thursday's Maryland Racing Commission meeting, officials from the Maryland State Fair in Timonium told commissioners that purses at the Aug. 27-Sept. 6 race meet would be level with what Thoroughbreds race for at Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course.

The surge in daily average purses from $175,000 last season to a hefty $287,000 in 2021 will represent the highest amounts ever offered at the five-furlong fairgrounds track with the distinctively banked turns.

Although late summer is the most competitive time on the calendar for racing in the mid-Atlantic region, Timonium should benefit from an expected equine population boost this season from the 600 horses that have been stabled on the grounds since late spring because of the closure of the stable area at Laurel, which

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Eight Wins Already in ’21–And It’s Only June

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton

We're not even at the midpoint of 2021, and one North American Thoroughbred is already taking aim at a ninth win on the season.

For perspective, the eight wins racked up so far this year by Arizona-based Six Ninety One (Congrats) are equal to the number of victories achieved by the four horses who co-led the continent during the entirety of 2020.

Such a fast start through the first 5 1/2 months puts Six Ninety One on a trajectory to blast past what has evolved as the standard for wins in a calendar year. Over the last decade, that number has ranged between eight and 12 wins annually.

You have to go back to 2011 to find the last exception. That was the explosively aberrational year Rapid Redux ran the table with a 19-for-19 record, largely by pillaging the starter-allowance ranks throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

Six Ninety One, at age nine, is also a starter-allowance stalwart, as are a good number of horses who routinely dominate the continent's most-wins category.

While it can be argued that these horses are able to pad their records by being eligible for soft conditions against thin competition while shielded from being claimed (if those starter races fill), it's still no small feat to amass eight trips to the winner's circle (with one second and a third), like Six Ninety One has done from 11 starts so far this year. In fact, it's even more of a challenge for the less physically gifted horses who populate the lower end of the claiming structure.

Six Ninety One was bred in Kentucky by Edwin and Melissa Anthony. He sold for $75,000 at KEESEP in 2013, then hammered for $59,000 at OBSOPN eight months later. Jim Thares, who bought the gelding at the Ocala auction, campaigned Six Ninety One between 2014 and 2019, earning four wins in Minnesota and Arizona before losing him via claim for $6,250 in the midst of a seven-race losing streak.

A speed-on-the-lead specialist over short distances, Six Ninety One's first-off-claim connections tried him in an 870-yard Quarter Horse dash at Arizona Downs in June 2019, which he won by 10 1/2 lengths. He then won at that same distance at Arapahoe Park, but didn't score again until 2020 when stretched back out to five furlongs against Thoroughbreds.

After a five-month break, Six Ninety One started off 2021 with five wins in eight sprints at Turf Paradise. He was claimed twice between February and April, for $3,000 and $6,250.

Current trainer Alfredo Asprino owns the gelding in partnership with Jesus Vielma, and they've kept Six Ninety One in optional-claiming and starter spots where he has not been offered for sale. He's now won three straight for those connections, and six consecutive starts since March.

Six Ninety One is entered Tuesday in the sixth race at Arizona Downs. He's favored at 3-5 on the morning line to get win number nine on the season. The gelding meets the starter eligibility by virtue of running in a $2,500 claimer last summer in Colorado.

Can Horses & Bears co-exist?

The Daily Herald of suburban Chicago ran two stories Saturday that are worth reading if you're following the Arlington International Racecourse sale by Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI), which reportedly closed its opening bid process last week. You can click through to find both articles here (then scroll down).

The first, a column by Jim O'Donnell, underscores that beyond the money involved, last Thursday's announcement that the Chicago Bears football team has submitted a bid for the 326-acre property to build a new stadium could have significant political appeal for the gaming corporation because “CDI needs to cash out of Arlington 'clean.'”

By that O'Donnell means that CDI will attempt to deflect the ill will of shutting down a nearly century-old historic landmark by delivering to the community “a global-class sports/entertainment facility and lush adjacent residential development.”

O'Donnell explained it like this: “There is already an issue of 'trustworthiness' between the more clearheaded citizens of Illinois and the Kentucky-based corporation. That directly stems from CDI's somewhat stunning decision to not add a full casino at [Arlington] two years ago after close to 20 years of lobbying for such enabling legislation.”

O'Donnell then alluded to the two Thoroughbred tracks CDI has already shuttered in the past decade (Hollywood Park and Calder Race Course), noting how regulators in other states are growing increasingly leery of CDI as a suitable steward to preserve the sport of racing.

“That question of CDI's 'trustworthiness' in Illinois could bleed over not only to its future gaming licensing in [Illinois] but also into other jurisdictions,” O'Donnell wrote.

The second Herald article, by Christopher Placek, noted that the bid for Arlington that was submitted last Tuesday by the track's former president, Roy Arnold, in partnership with a consortium of developers and investors, calls for the track's grandstand to remain in place, while a mid-size arena for a minor-league hockey team is constructed as part of a 60-acre entertainment district alongside a 300-unit housing development and 60 acres of industrial space.

But after the headline-dominating announcement by the Bears (these are the only two bids that have been publicly disclosed), Arlington Heights mayor Tom Hayes endorsed the idea of combining the two projects. He acknowledged, though, that there are challenges to building a football stadium and horse track together on the same property within his village, because some of the racing infrastructure might have to be relocated.

“In a perfect world, you'd have–and you do have–enough land to do it,” Hayes told the Herald. “The only question is would you have to at least partially tear down or reconfigure the existing grandstand … That's my only concern about trying to do both. I don't know if you could do it given the existing location.”

Hayes told the Herald that the industry-standard size for a National Football League stadium and associated parking is 160 acres. Placek wrote that Arlington's track, stables and parking come to about 125 acres. “That would leave some 40 acres on the massive site” for other purposes, he wrote–which may or may not be enough to fit in the other aspects of the desired mixed-use development.

The trustees of the Arlington Heights Village are expected to vote Monday night on zoning changes that would expressly prohibit certain uses on the property, like adult businesses, kiddie theme parks, or warehouses.

Baffert judge has 'court' experience…

The federal lawsuit that trainer Bob Baffert filed last Monday against the New York Racing Association in an effort to get his banishment there reversed on the basis that it allegedly violates his right to due process got assigned to a judge who is no stranger to handling sports-scandal cases.

Carol Bagley Amon, a Senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, is the judge who in 2008 sentenced former National Basketball Association referee Tim Donaghy to 15 months in prison for his admitted role in fixing the outcomes of pro hoops games he officiated.

Selective mastery…

Can you name the jockey who currently leads the continent with a hefty 41% winning percentage among all riders who have had at least 50 mounts this year?

Here's a hint: He's 57 years old and is a master of riding selectively and exclusively at Finger Lakes.

The answer is John R. Davila, Jr., with a 26-14-7 record from 63 rides. That 75% in-the-money strike rate also grabs your attention.

Davila, who began riding at Finger Lakes in 1982, is the track's all-time winningest jockey. He rides first call for trainer Chris Englehart, the track's all-time winningest trainer. They'll partner on three horses at Finger Lakes on Tuesday.

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The Week in Review: 31 Shades (and Counting) of Derby Gray

Gray horses have been in a GI Kentucky Derby rut the past 15 years. No fewer than 31 consecutive grays (or roans) have gone to post without winning on the first Saturday in May (or September) since Giacomo roared home in front at 50-1 in 2005.

That's the longest Derby drought for grays in terms of consecutive starts since 1930, when Churchill Downs began compiling detailed records related to horse colors. There's an asterisk as to whether it's the longest stretch in terms of years. There was a 17-year gap between Decidedly (1962) and Spectacular Bid (1979), but during that span, fellow gray Dancer's Image (1968) crossed the finish wire first, then was subsequently disqualified for a controversial Butazolidin positive.

This Saturday's torch-bearers to snap the streak are juvenile champ and 'TDN Rising Star' Essential Quality (Tapit) and GI Florida Derby runner-up Soup and Sandwich (Into Mischief).

Gray horses have a special place in racing lore, with both negative and positive connotations largely rooted in superstition. You've probably heard the phrase, “They say a gray won't earn its hay” around the backstretch. Yet you know full well that Derby-winning Hall of Famer Silver Charm (1997) did okay in the earnings department, bankrolling $6.9 million in purses.

“Never bet an unknown gray” (a horse picked out of the program without first seeing its coat color) is another alleged trackside taboo. “Gray horses for gray days,” suggests that horses of the fairer color have some unexplained edge in the mud (someone with access to a more extensive database than me, please run a long-term query).

Some natural selection theorists have proposed that grays evolved as faster horses in the wild because their distinctly lighter color made them more visible to predators. Purportedly, this enabled surviving grays to pass along some form of superior speed to their offspring.

The modern era of fascination with gray Thoroughbreds traces to the advent of television. Can you imagine the heady rush of witnessing “The Gray Ghost” streak around the track as a luminescent blur on your cutting-edge, black-and-white, rabbit-ears set back in the early 1950s?

That would be Native Dancer, who racked up a jaw-dropping 21-for-22 lifetime record. But his one race that gets talked about the most is when the sport's first TV hero suffered his only career loss–in the 1953 Derby.

Other high-profile grays who tasted Derby defeat include Holy Bull (1994) and Skip Away (1996), both of whom still managed to win 3-year-old championship honors. Tapit lost the 2004 edition prior to rising to prolific status as a stallion.

This column has mentioned four of the eight gray or roan Derby winners since 1930 (those two separate color distinctions got merged into one descriptor by The Jockey Club in 1993). Care to pause before reading the next paragraph to name the remaining four?

You probably got champion filly Winning Colors (1988) right off the bat. The others were Monarchos (2001), Gato Del Sol (1982) and Determine (1954).

Safest Surfaces?

Two stories in the news last week involved racetrack safety on the mid-Atlantic circuit. On Apr. 20, the chairman of the West Virginia Racing Commission (WVRC) went on the record as wanting Charles Town Races to consider installing a synthetic surface (read it here). Two days later, the idea of going to synth at Laurel Park was batted around at the Maryland Racing Commission meeting after it was revealed that a dirt-track repair project there was likely to take about 40 days to complete (story here).

During the WVRC meeting, chairman Ken Lowe, Jr. asked Mick Peterson–the director of the Racetrack Safety Program, who is familiar with the work at both tracks–to tell the board at which track in North America he'd choose to train and race a Thoroughbred if he owned one.

Peterson answered that provocative question by citing positive safety profiles for three tracks on the continent.

“For the last three years, the safest racetrack in North America has been Del Mar,” Peterson said, noting that the record stands out considering “how many strikes they have against them.”

Peterson explained that Del Mar's dirt track annually gets used by “way too many horses.” Plus, he added, the seasonal meet is traditionally preceded by a county fair that allows the dirt to be compacted by heavy equipment that would ideally never cross most racetrack surfaces.

“But what they've got going for them is it never rains and the weather varies about five degrees the whole year,” Peterson said. “That's huge.”

Peterson said the recently installed Tapeta surface at Turfway Park also rates highly, and he gave a positive assessment of its predecessor, Polytrack.

“They were giving Woodbine [Tapeta since 2016] a run for the money on being the safest racetrack in North America,” Peterson said. “And that's with [Turfway] running some lower-level horses during the winter…. Running during the winter, that synthetic track has been incredibly successful there.”

Lowe seemed to be nudging Peterson to share his advocacy for switching to synthetic at Charles Town. But Peterson stopped short of doing so, underscoring that synthetic racing surfaces are not his specific area of expertise.

“There are definitely some biomechanical issues that a number of the horsemen have identified, the hind-end and soft-tissue injuries on synthetic,” Peterson said. “I don't think they're perfect right now. I think there's ways that we can improve them and improve the maintenance of them. But you just look at Turfway on their synthetics, I mean that's just incredible the record they've had over the last 10 years.”

Retreats from Racing in Illinois

During the same Apr. 22 earnings conference call in which Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) tried to spin it as a positive that it was abandoning its plans to build a $300-million hotel and historical horse race (HHR) gaming facility on the first turn of its flagship racetrack, the CEO of the corporation that put an end to racing at both Hollywood Park and Calder Race Course termed it “all good” as the process continues to sell Arlington International Racecourse for non-racing purposes (full story here).

“With respect to the Arlington Park land sale, a preliminary bid date has been set, and as those bids come in in the second quarter, we'll evaluate them and figure out next steps,” said CDI's CEO Bill Carstanjen. “The ultimate conclusion of that process is something I can't responsibly predict for you because we'll have to see the nature of the bids…. This is what it takes to run a complex process to sell a big piece of land with a lot of value like that one.”

As for whether CDI would seek to transfer its Arlington license to another part of Illinois, Carstanjen said the corporation would take a wait-and-see approach to determine, “whether there's opportunities to move the racetrack elsewhere in the state as well.”

Arlington's opening day is Friday. Another Illinois track opens for the season Tuesday, but you might not recognize the name when you see it on the simulcast calendar.

“FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing” is the track formerly known as Fairmount Park.

Obviously, Fairmount's recent decision to toss 95 years of naming history into the nearby Mississippi River isn't as harmful as CDI's decision to entirely wipe away a cherished 94-year-old racetrack itself. But both decisions speak to the disquieting nature of horse racing's supposed “partnerships” with corporate gaming entities.

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