Churchill Downs: Rain shouldn’t spoil opening night
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The thunderstorms expected for opening night of the Churchill Downs spring meet can suppress the buzz for only so long. By nearly universal acclamation, an epic Kentucky Derby is right around the corner, and besides, a little rain never stopped the locals from dancing and drinking on a Saturday night.
Indeed, yet another popular tradition has taken hold at this historic track: This will be the fifth spring meet with a Downs After Dark opener, and it’s common knowledge that the targeted demographic (i.e., young folk) of these night cards does not much care whether the feature race is the Derby Trial, the William Walker, or the Hipster Stakes – as long as they can see, be seen, and enjoy the party with those horses as a cool backdrop.
The Derby Trial, now relegated to the trash heap of anachronistic stakes after a mere 90 runnings, has been renamed the Pat Day Mile while retaining its Grade 3 status and furthering the big-event status of Kentucky Derby Day by being assimilated into an already cram-packed stakes lineup. In its place for opening night comes a $100,000, six-furlong race named in honor of William “Billy” Walker, whose feats as a jockey included capturing the 1877 Derby aboard Baden-Baden.
Blofeld, an undefeated colt trained by Todd Pletcher, is the favorite for the inaugural running of the Walker, which drew a field of six 3-year-olds while anchoring opening night as the seventh of 11 races. First post is 6 p.m. Eastern, with the Walker set for 9:05 and the last race for 11:10. General admission is $10.
The meet opens with another new wrinkle from ever-active Churchill construction crews: 20 ground-level private suites, to be utilized primarily by Derby and Oaks owners, have been fashioned into sections formerly labeled as 117, 118, and 119, split by the paddock runway and adjacent to a newly configured winner’s circle. The cost was announced at $4.2 million, bringing the grand total in renovation expenses at this 140-year-old plant to nearly $180 million in the last decade. Projects last year included installation of the massive Big Board video screen that can be seen from virtually every vantage point on the front side and infield.
“We honestly do listen to what our fans and horsemen tell us they’d like to have,” Churchill racetrack president Kevin Flanery said at a recent unveiling of the suites.
After opening night, Churchill will go dark Sunday and Monday, with the five-day Derby week starting with a rare Tuesday card. Derby week, as usual, concludes with a slew of stakes, with a total of 13 on Friday and Saturday being led by the $1 million Oaks and the $2 million Derby, respectively.
After the Derby, four-day race weeks of Thursdays through Sundays will be employed, with Churchill experimenting with a 5 p.m. twilight post on Thursdays (instead of Fridays) while using a 12:45 p.m. start for all other days (except Downs After Dark). There are 16 post-Derby stakes, 10 of them graded.
Saturday marks the first of three night programs at the 38-day spring meet, with the other two set for June 13 (Stephen Foster night) and June 27 (closing night). Both cards will offer four stakes each, with the Grade 1, $500,000 Foster once again being the post-Derby highlight of the meet.
Horseplayers who got used to seeing many of the top East Coast trainers and jockeys active at Keeneland this spring will notice a mass exodus after the Derby, leaving Steve Asmussen, Mike Maker, Dale Romans, and Tom Amoss as logical candidates for leading trainer, and Corey Lanerie, Shaun Bridgmohan, Julien Leparoux, Miguel Mena, and Jimmy Graham among the leading jockeys.
After a week of mostly dry and chilly conditions here, the forecast for Saturday calls for a 90 percent chance of rain starting in the early morning hours and continuing intermittently into the evening, when temperatures will dip into the low 50s.