Charles Town reopens Thursday evening with large fields
Charles Town resumes its meet – interrupted, like many around the country, by the coronavirus pandemic – on Thursday night with an eight-race card that will be conducted spectator-free.
First post for the card, highlighted by a $29,000 allowance race for fillies and mares, is 7 p.m. Eastern. Charles Town will race Thursday through Sunday, with strict protocols in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In addition to typical protocols seen at other venues, such as temperature checks and requiring protective face coverings, Charles Town is permitting only horses stabled in West Virginia or West Virginia-breds on the grounds. The receiving barn is closed. Thus, trainers who are not allocated stalls at the track must make arrangements to ship into the stalls of a trainer on the grounds. No trainers or staff are permitted other than for those trainers allocated stalls.
Also, only locally based riders – defined as those with at least 50 percent of their mounts in 2020 having come at Charles Town – can be named to ride. Any riders coming from another state will be subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine period.
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Charles Town hit pause on its meet on March 21, when West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice ordered all nonessential businesses in the state to close. Training has continued unabated at the track since then. West Virginia’s other Thoroughbred track, Mountaineer, had been scheduled to open its meet April 26; the track now plans to open May 31.
The region’s appetite to return to racing is seen in Thursday night’s entries. All eight races have drawn at least eight entrants, and three races have drawn overflow fields.
Included in the latter group , with 10 in the main body of the field plus three also-eligibles, is the featured allowance, for fillies and mares who have never won a race other than maiden, claiming, starter, waiver claiming, or statebred, or which have never won two races.
Longstorylucy is coming off an allowance win in February at Charles Town. Silk Stocking has won a pair of claiming races here this year, but is looking to rebound after finishing fourth in an allowance race in March. Pecan Pattie, first or second in six of her last seven races, won a starter allowance at Parx Racing last out, while Morningafterblues comes off a claiming victory at Penn National.