Hawthorne card called off for lack of entries

STICKNEY, Ill. – Hawthorne was forced to cancel a racing program scheduled for Tuesday, March 8 because of insufficient entries to fill a program.

Entries for the card were taken Thursday. There were 11 races for the day listed in the condition book, and Hawthorne added another 10 extra races to try and put together a full card, but only 57 horses were entered in the 21 different races. Rather than cobble together a sub-par card, the decision was made to vacate the race date.

Such occurrences have happened periodically in California over the last year, but there is no recent history in Chicago of cards being called off for lack of entries.

Hawthorne’s 2011 spring race meet began Feb. 13 with racing conducted Fridays and Saturdays, but on March 1, Tuesdays and Wednesdays were added. The program on Tuesday, March 1 consisted of eight races with a total of 59 starters. On Wednesday, eight races had 58 total starters.

Assistant general manager Jim Miller said there were 1,250 horses on the Hawthorne backstretch, a number that ought to be sufficient to support a four-day race week with eight or nine races per day.

“The rest of the meet should be fine,” Miller said.