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Churchill Downs Announces Trio Of Investment Projects, Including New Plans For Clubhouse Turn

Churchill Downs announced three major multi-year capital investments to transform key areas at the home of the Kentucky Derby. These projects will ultimately provide new, unique and extraordinary guest experiences in the coming years. Plans include the debut of a new project each year over the next three years, beginning with the Homestretch Club for Kentucky Derby 2022 and culminating with a Paddock area redesign for the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby in 2024.

The Homestretch Club will renovate and update the grandstand area adjacent to the Twin Spires along the famed track's homestretch. The project will convert what is currently outdoor bleacher seating next to the Winner's Circle Suites and below the Jockey Club Suites into three unique seating options with all-inclusive amenities. This seating offers an ideal view of the starting gate, a superior vantage of the track's Big Board and a bird's eye view of the homestretch as the horses thunder to the finish line. Ticketed guests in the Homestretch Club will have access to 18,600 sq. ft. of new interior premium hospitality space in the first-floor concourse area that will be transformed into a newly reimagined, high-end air-conditioned club atmosphere to place a bet, enjoy the all-inclusive food and beverage offerings and other amenities. This premium hospitality space will be accented by a grand staircase and a 100 ft. feature bar making it an elegant and desirable option for special events at historic Churchill Downs.

The new all-inclusive ticket offerings for the Homestretch Club will include:

· 30 Trackside Lounges along the rail for up to 200 guests offering a “courtside seat” experience

· 66 Terraced Dining Tables for up to 440 guests creating covered outdoor dining

· 2,610 Stadium Club seats providing a cushioned, comfortable and upgraded experience

· 5 private VIP Hospitality Lounges for up to 60 guests

In total, the project will provide for 3,250 all-inclusive seats, which is 1,950 fewer reserved seats than were previously in this area. The $45 million Homestretch Club project is scheduled for completion in time for the 148th Kentucky Derby on Saturday, May 7, 2022.

The Turn 1 Experience will introduce permanent all-inclusive stadium seats at Churchill Downs in a unique location with exclusive views of the Kentucky Derby walkover and the picturesque first turn framed by the Twin Spires. The project will upgrade and expand what is currently 3,400 temporary Oaks and Derby seats to 5,100 all-inclusive permanent stadium seats with significantly improved amenities to enhance the overall guest experience. The permanent construction will also add a climate-controlled hospitality venue below the new stadium seats that will serve as premium seating for up to 2,000 guests who will have access to an adjacent trackside reserved viewing terrace allowing them to view signature moments along the rail.

The Turn 1 Experience will include:

· 5,100 Covered Stadium Seats

· 50,000 sq. ft. climate-controlled Hospitality Venue that includes reserved dining room tables for up to 2,000 guests with an adjacent trackside Viewing Terrace

· 2 Concourses to allow for better guest circulation and additional customer amenities for stadium seat-ticketed guests, creating a convenient place for socializing with outdoor racetrack view

In total, the project will provide for 7,100 all-inclusive seats, which is 3,700 more reserved seats than were previously in this area. The $90 million Turn 1 Experience is scheduled for completion in time for the 149th Kentucky Derby in 2023.

The combination of these two capital projects will result in a net addition of 1,750 premium reserved seats.

The Paddock Area Redesign is in the early design stage and will transform the existing Paddock area in a manner that will enhance the experience for nearly every guest who enters the gates of the historic racetrack. In addition to introducing new and innovative seating and experiences, the redesign will reduce congestion by significantly improving the flow of guests through the Paddock and Plaza areas. This project is tentatively scheduled to debut for the 150th Kentucky Derby in 2024. More details will be shared in the coming months.

“We have so much to anticipate as we look toward the 150th Kentucky Derby in 2024,” said Mike Anderson, president of Churchill Downs Racetrack. “We've listened to our customers' feedback over the years and the response to those demands can be seen in these upcoming capital projects. The design of each will blend 147 years of tradition with an updated atmosphere that celebrates our storied past and ushers in a spectacular future for Churchill Downs.”

Guests with inquiries about reserving premium seating in the Homestretch Club and Turn 1 Experience may call (502) 636-4450 or (502) 636-4447.

Every fall, Churchill Downs sells the following year's Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks via an online sale. Guests may sign-up to be invited to the 2022 Kentucky Derby online sale to receive ticket and pricing information at https://www.kentuckyderby.com/tickets/2022-sale-signup.

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Letter to the Editor: Time for Horse Racing to Exhale

by Armen Antonian, Ph.D.

Horse racing is stuck: stuck in the winter of 2019. Stuck at my home track at Santa Anita. That Santa Anita winter meet saw 37 horses euthanized and the meet stopped for a time due to horse safety concerns. California Senator Dianne Feinstein admonished the track publicly and Governor Gavin Newsom called horse racing “archaic.” There was real fear among Santa Anita officials for the continuation of horse racing in California.

The events at Santa Anita were a trauma that reverberated around the U.S. racing world. The critics had been jabbing at racing for decades as societal mores regarding animals had changed dramatically. Suddenly, the entire industry found itself in a huge public relations and political crisis from which it has not escaped.

California and Santa Anita led the reforms aimed at making racing safer. Horses would be screened, medical records transparent, medication levels and rules therein standardized and much more. Throughout the country, industry practices changed dramatically. Did the changes work? Yes, the changes have worked. There were 11 deaths at the recently concluded Santa Anita winter meet. Racing fatalities have dropped significantly in California. That is the story that needs to be told throughout the country. Racing is back on a solid foundation. But that is not what is happening looking at the headlines today. Far from it.

I was recently mingling among young fans at Hollywood Gold Cup Day at Santa Anita. They were as full of the wonder and joy of racing as I was in the late 1960s as a youth. My immigrant Armenian dad (who had been seized from Russia by the Nazis for forced labor during World War II) would tip the ushers so we could have a precious box up in the stands with the owners, movie stars and the trainers. There was actor John Forsythe. Walking by, always expressionless, was trainer Charlie Whittingham. What great horses I saw at Santa Anita over the years: Damascus, Affirmed, Spectacular Bid! And many years later, what event could compare with my experience at a Kentucky Derby? I thought to myself: who is going to educate this generation about racing and keep them in the game to see what I saw? The racing industry or the critics?

The choice is immediate. Why is the industry, in its entirety, not stepping forward and telling a renewed story of a sport that is as brilliant as its horses and its people and of a sport again ready to regain luster? The industry is not seizing the moment because the critics continue to set the dialogue. The critics' paradigm about racing is what prevails in the general media.

Just what do the critics say about horse racing? To start, they see no beauty in the interaction of humans to horses. This is an extreme position and must be so noted and challenged by industry spokespeople. The critics see no beauty or sport in the competition of horses. They start with the fact that horses die. But for the critics, horses die only in racing. The critics do not like to admit that horses also die in nature. The industry must counter that horses are actually better off in racing than in nature. Nature is not neutral. Nature is more about Darwin than Bambi. And, aesthetically, racing can be beautiful–something the critics, a priori, will not admit.

The critics then attack horse racing from another angle. Horses are drugged. And winning horses are “juiced.” The critics prey on a vague notion that has lingered about the sport that it is somehow rigged. I call this the film noir version of horse racing: everyone in racing is seedy or greedy or crooked. We have all seen some fragments of this view in a plot of an old movie. Such a notion is palpably false. Trainers know how hard it is to win a race. The general public needs to be better educated about the game. This dark view of racing needs to be met head on. How are races really won: pace, class, conditioning, etc. Young folk are hungry for information about the game. At the track, they have mountains of questions. Racing needs to continually educate the fanbase. Instead, recent events and industry decisions have actually fueled this pejorative film noir view of racing.

By 2021, the industry had made great strides in the area of horse safety. In watching what transpired after the positive test result for Medina Spirit, one wouldn't know it. After news of the first test positive, Churchill Downs suspended the trainer from entering horses at its track. Such a definitive response opened the door for the critics to create the spin about the Derby result, a result that quickly came to be viewed as bogus. The trainer later pointed to a creme for a rash as the (undetermined) reason for the test result. Even this purported creme explanation was used by one critic's group to state that the creme was given purposely to mask a secret injection of Medina Spirit before the Derby. And so it went…

The general press, not especially astute at covering horse racing these days, followed a story that was defined by one side. Not surprising where they too ended up. There was no industry spokesperson to counter the excesses of the public discussion which cast a long shadow about racing's product itself. As the second positive result came in from the lab, Churchill was categoric in its response and its accompanying statement fed readily into the critics' dialogue that the race result was phony and that racing Medina Spirit was not safe. A drastic measure of a two-year suspension by Churchill of the trainer was proposed. The extent of the suspension cast further suspicion about Medina Spirit's Derby victory.

Before the vitriol and the finger pointing ensued, it would have been nice to hear someone stop and say that it was “a good thing” Medina Spirit's rash was treated.

The Derby product is racing's product and its results cannot be picked apart so readily. But that is what happened. Ironically, those with little expertise in horse racing defined the illegitimacy of a Derby result while those with expertise remained largely silent. So we learned from the charges led by the critics and found in the general press that it was not safe to race Medina Spirit Derby Day and his win was not an honest result. When Churchill made an official pronouncement, it used words like integrity and safety. The critics' talking points about Medina Spirit's Derby run and that of Churchill management were comparable. “Integrity” casts doubt on the veracity of the Derby result. The victory of Medina Spirit has not yet been adjudicated so how is it illegitimate as it stands? Safety? Medina Spirit ran two weeks later in the Preakness without incident. Where did the notion that Medina Spirit was not “safe” to race Derby Day come from?

A Pandora's Box was opened. About that time, a friend called me up and said, “Hey, I heard they gave steroids to the Derby winner, just like Lance Armstrong.” Medications and the levels therein will take time to work out. The rules have just been put in place. The industry must be patient. The rules must be tried and tested and workable for horsemen also. And let's find out what really happened before we denigrate a Derby winner. Let whatever litigation take place that needs to take place in the courts.

The sport of U.S. racing is its history. And Triple Crown history is its ultimate statement. The overreactions of Churchill have disparaged its own product and unfortunately fueled the film noir view of racing promoted by the critics. There is no mechanism to step in and help a racetrack deal with the fallout of critical circumstances. The industry needs a permanent, day-to-day, public relations and political entity that can respond in the industry's general interest. Such a body can also proactively educate the public and the general press about horse racing today.

It is time for the industry to exhale and tell its story. Safety? Horse racing is much safer today. Say so. Time for racing to recount its tradition to a new generation and disseminate its renewed story to everyone. Time to again be proud. Time to take the narrative about racing away from the critics.

Armen Antonian holds a doctorate in political economy and political philosophy and is a lifelong racing fan.

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More Allegations of Damaged Samples in Medina Spirit Testing

An attempt by the connections of Medina Spirit (Protonico) to have a third-party lab perform a new series of tests on the colt's bodily fluids in the wake of the colt's GI Kentucky Derby betamethasone positive has resulted in allegations by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC) of a “lack of candor and contemptuous conduct by the New York Laboratory, [trainer Bob Baffert and owner Zedan Racing Stables], or both.”

According to a status report and motion for order filed in Kentucky's Franklin Circuit Court July 19, the KHRC wants the judge in the case to compel that Baffert and/or Zedan Racing disclose what methods of testing were performed on a urine sample whose remnants allegedly came back damaged after undergoing testing July 14 in New York.

It is the second time in seven weeks that a party in this court case has alleged that samples came back contaminated from an accredited lab.

On June 1–the same date that Medina Spirit's referee sample was announced as positive–the KHRC informed Baffert and Zedan that body fluid remnants had been damaged during transport to the split-sample testing lab.

The July 14 new round of testing performed by the New York Equine Drug Testing and Research Laboratory was part of a court mandate in a lawsuit initiated by Baffert and Zedan Racing on June 7 that sought, in part, some form of “limits of detection” testing that could purportedly show that the betamethasone was present along with other compounds in the topical ointment Otomax.

Betamethasone is a corticosteroid allowed in Kentucky as a therapeutic medication, but state rules require at least a 14-day withdrawal time before racing.

Attorneys for Baffert and stable owner Amr Zedan have stated a desire to prove that the Derby winner's betamethasone positive–which has yet to be adjudicated by the KHRC–resulted from an ointment to treat a skin condition and not from an intra-articular injection.

Yet any level of detection on race day is a Class C violation in Kentucky, with no distinction listed in the rules pertaining how the substance got inside a horse.

Tim Sullivan of the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Tuesday that KHRC executive director Marc Guilfoil and equine medical director Dr. Bruce Howard transported a second urine sample to New York while accompanied by Dr. Clara Fenger and Tom Huckabee, who represented Baffert and Zedan.

Sullivan wrote that, “In signed affidavits, Guilfoil and Howard said the [New York] lab's program director, Dr. George Maylin, initially insisted on retaining remnants of the original sample, and subsequently said he had not read the court order requiring the return of those remnants despite a June 21 email in which he had pledged to abide by that order….

“When the remnants were ultimately produced, however, the KHRC filing says the urine tube contained only one to two milliliters of 'bloody fluid,' a broken serum separator tube and another tube with serum that had been saved–all presented at room temperature instead of frozen, as preferred. According to Guilfoil and Howard, Maylin explained that most of the urine sample had been used up in testing, but did not provide a clear answer when twice asked what testing had been conducted,” the Courier-Journal story explained.

Maylin did not immediately respond to an interview request from the Courier-Journal on Tuesday.

W. Craig Robertson, an attorney for Baffert and Zedan, told the paper the plaintiffs would be responding in court, adding that, “The statements contained in the KHRC's status report are inaccurate. We have intentionally had no direct communication with the New York lab, so we are unaware of any testing or the results.”

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Mandaloun ‘Sound, Happy’ After Eventful Haskell Win

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY–Shortly after GI TVG.com Haskell S. winner Mandaloun (Into Mischief) arrived at his barn at 10 a.m. Sunday morning following his trip north from Monmouth Park, trainer Brad Cox said it was too early to say what will be the next test for the Juddmonte homebred.

Mandaloun reached the wire second in a Haskell, beaten a nose by Hot Rod Charlie (Oxbow). Within minutes, though, the stewards awarded him the victory by disqualifying Hot Rod Charlie for causing Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) to stumble in the stretch, unseating jockey Paco Lopez. Midnight Bourbon clipped heels with Hot Rod Charlie, who had drifted into his path under jockey Flavien Prat.

Technically, the Haskell is Mandaloun's first Grade I victory. However, it is quite possible that he may be placed first in the GI Kentucky Derby. Mandaloun finished second in the Derby to Medina Spirit, who could be disqualified for testing positive for a medication that must be out of a horse's system on race day. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has yet to hold a hearing on Medina Spirit's Derby post-race positive for the corticosteroid betamethasone.

Cox said he liked what he saw of Mandaloun following his approximately four-hour van ride from the Jersey Shore to upstate New York.

“He looks good. Looks happy. Sound, so far,” Cox said.

Cox has Godolphin's GI Belmont S. winner Essential Quality (Tapit) pointed to Saratoga's marquee race, the $1.25-million GI Runhappy Travers S. Aug. 28. Essential Quality is scheduled run in the GII Jim Dandy S., the local Travers prep, on July 31. While Cox said that it is possible that Mandaloun could be in the Travers, too, the colt's schedule will be shaped in discussions with Garrett O'Rourke, manager of Juddmonte's U.S. division. The GI Pennsylvania Derby Sept. 25 at Parx is another option.

“We already decided that we were going to ship him up here,” Cox said. “Let him kind of catch his breath. Let us catch our breath. More importantly, him, and just kind of watch him over the next few weeks and then come up with a plan. Moving forward, I think we've just kind of decided the two logical spots would be the Travers and the PA Derby.”

Mandaloun will follow Cox's typical pattern for horses between races. His first work back will be easy, regardless of what race is next. Meanwhile, Cox and O'Rourke will monitor what is taking place in the 3-year-old male division.

“We'll see how he trains and if he moves forward off this Haskell and what unfolds in the Jim Dandy. How that plays out. How that race looks,” Cox said. “They have the Curlin that weekend, as well. That could play a role in what happens in the Travers. We'll watch what everyone else is doing and what Essential Quality is doing, how each horse is training and make a decision down the road.”

Under Florent Geroux, Mandaloun sat an inside trip a bit off the pace in the Haskell and moved into contention on the second turn. In the stretch, Geroux took Mandaloun between tiring pacesetter Following Sea (Runhappy) on the rail and Midnight Bourbon. Hot Rod Charlie and Flavien Prat came wide to get to the lead before drifting in front of Midnight Bourbon. Lopez and the colt escaped serious injury.

Mandaloun battled on through the stretch with Hot Rod Charlie, who managed to prevail by inches at the wire.

“Watching the race live, I thought he ran a fantastic race. He got a great trip,” Cox said. “I thought he got a very similar trip to what he got into Kentucky Derby. We talked about that. We thought that might be the trip we need in order to win the race. Once again, two horses came to the wire together. Both of them ran winning races. I thought, turning for home, we had a big shot. Hot Rod Charlie got away from us a little bit. Then we were battling back.”

Cox acknowledged that he was a bit frustrated that Mandaloun's victory in the Haskell and, perhaps a Derby win, will be via the disqualification of another horse.

“This was a little better, obviously, than the Derby thing, because it's not been resolved yet,” Cox said. “You'd like to cross the wire first, but yesterday he was right there, so it was a little different story.”

Cox reiterated the point that Mandaloun turned in a strong performance in the Haskell.

“It's an odd way to win a race, but he ran a winning race,” Cox said. “It wasn't as if he was fading. It wasn't as if he was well-beaten. He ran a big race and we're proud of the effort.”

The victory in the 'Win and You're In' Haskell provided Mandaloun with a guaranteed berth in the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic as well as all-important Grade I victory. Cox said that success at Monmouth will allow the colt's connections the opportunity to try to pick the best route to Del Mar and the Breeders' Cup.

“Hot Rod Charlie is one of the top contenders in the division. It would be nice to run in a Grade I before the Breeders' Cup and maybe not have to tackle him again,” Cox said. “You just want to put them in where they could possibly have a nice race prior to the Breeders' Cup, without it being extremely taxing on them. I'm not saying give them a race, but where they're not really laying it down.”

Midnight Bourbon Escapes Major Injury From Spill

Trainer Steve Asmussen reported that Midnight Bourbon appears to have sustained only minor injuries from his near fall.

“Everything X-rayed well on Midnight Bourbon today,” Asmussen said. “Hoping all is superficial.”

“They did X-rays rays on him and jogged him this morning,” added David Fiske, the stable's longtime general manager. “The X-rays were no different than what they showed before the race and he seems to be jogging better today than he was yesterday. Everybody's got their fingers crossed that nothing pops up in the next few days or so. We'll watch him and wait and see. It's a little early to make any kind of plans for him.”

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