Churchill turf racing a ‘day-to-day decision'

The featured eighth race Wednesday at Churchill Downs is a good one, a 3-year-old restricted second-level allowance race also open to $125,000 claimers and carded for 1 1/8 miles on grass. The state of the grass course, however, is not so good.

Despite the absence of precipitation, Churchill moved races carded for grass onto dirt this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The turf course was used as planned last Wednesday and Thursday. Through Sunday, Nov. 12, Churchill had run 16 grass races during the 10 days of a meeting that began Oct. 29.

“We’ve decided it’s best to limit the number of turf races because we’re dissatisfied with the course’s current status,” Darren Rogers, Churchill’s senior director of media services, said in an email Sunday.

Multiple sources said Sunday that jockeys felt the turf course might be unsafe, one source using the term, “slippery,” to describe conditions.

“We’ve had good, open dialogue with the jockeys to get productive feedback,” Rogers said in the email.

:: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets.

Churchill spent more than $10 million, according to the track, on a new grass course that opened during spring 2022 and replaced an old course that also had been problematic. The new course, however, met with safety issues in the first weeks of use in May 2022. The course came under scrutiny again this past spring, though two deaths that occurred in grass races in early May had nothing to do with breakdowns.

While grass races are still being carded, Rogers said turf races could continue being moved to dirt during the final 10 days of the fall meet.

“The preservation of fresh running lanes appears to provide better ground, but it’s a day-to-day decision,” Rogers said, adding that track officials would “continue to monitor the course one day at a time.”

The situation leaves handicappers working in advance in limbo when it comes to races like Wednesday’s featured eighth, which drew eight entrants. Wizard of Westwood, however, should go competitively on turf or dirt.

Part of California-based trainer Michael McCarthy’s string in Kentucky, Wizard of Westwood debuted in July 2022 at Los Alamitos, comfortably winning a five-furlong dirt race. That’s the only fast-track dirt win posted by any horse in the race, and while Wizard of Westwood has excelled on grass, there’s at least that piece of evidence from 16 months ago that the horse goes fine on the main track, too.

:: Get Daily Racing Form Past Performances – the exclusive home of Beyer Speed Figures

Wizard of Westwood returned from a lengthy layoff following his debut this past March and has made six starts during 2023, all in turf stakes company. He won the Cinema in June and after a ninth-place finish in the Grade 1 Belmont Derby Invitational came back with a much better fourth in the Dueling Grounds Derby.

Fearless Soldier, a sharp Kentucky Downs allowance winner for trainer Todd Pletcher, McCarthy’s former boss, ran decently over a sloppy track Oct. 7 when the Jockey Club Derby Invitational was rained off turf.

:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.