Competition hurt field size at Fair Grounds in 2021-22
Fair Grounds handled an average of $3,209,189 per day on an 80-day racing season that ended March 27.
Gross handle for the meet at the famed New Orleans racing venue was $256,735,127. The track conducted 747 races during a season that began on Thanksgiving, 744 of them for Thoroughbreds, three – all on Louisiana Champions Day – for Quarter Horses.
With good weather prevailing through the 2021 portion of the meet, Fair Grounds got in 235 turf races, up from 198 during the 2020-21 season. The turf course showed signs of strong prevailing bias, favoring outside closers when the temporary turf rail was set 15 feet out or farther. There was concern at times that the innermost portion of the course wasn’t draining properly. Fair Grounds, to positive effect, replaced the course’s drainage system before the 2014-15 racing season.
Average handle per race during the 2021-22 meet was $343,688. Fair Grounds averaged 7.78 starters per race this meet for an average handle of $44,175 per starter. Average starters per race rose, though somewhat marginally, to 8.43 in grass races. The 7.78 average is the lowest posted in the modern history of Fair Grounds as the track felt equine population pressure from various points, including the increased popularity of Turfway Park, massive purses at Oaklawn Park, and intrastate competition from Delta Downs, which runs a meet nearly concurrent with Fair Grounds’s.
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Gross handle rose 3.9 percent over the 2020-21 season, which included 77 race days. Despite racing three more days this season, Fair Grounds ran only 18 more races than last meet and total starters dropped from 5,955 to 5,811. Average handle per race rose 1.6 percent to $343,688 while average handle per starter was up 6.3% to $44,181 compared to the 2020-21 season.
Hurricane Ida swept through New Orleans in late summer, damaging beyond repair two Fair Grounds barns, which were razed before the meet, and taking out the track’s tote board. Fair Grounds avoided another blow when the popular New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, scheduled for last fall, was canceled owing to COVID-19 concerns. JazzFest usually takes place in spring but was rescheduled in 2021 because of COVID. Had the festival gone as planned, turf racing couldn’t have been conducted until at least January.
Ron Faucheux pulled away late in the meet to win his second straight Fair Grounds training title, his 43 winners 10 more than runner-up Brad Cox. James Graham also made a late move to take control of a tight race for leading rider, riding 72 winners, 10 more than Mitchell Murrill’s second-highest total. Evelyn Benoit’s Brittlyn Stable was runaway leading owner with 22 winners.
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Fair Grounds’s series for young dirt-route horses brought forth a potential Kentucky Derby favorite in Epicenter, who made his first start of the meet Dec. 26 winning the Gun Runner Stakes. After taking a nose loss to Call Me Midnight in the Lecomte, Epicenter dominated the Risen Star Stakes and the $1 million Louisiana Derby. Steve Asmussen, a former leading Fair Grounds trainer, trains Epicenter and also sent out Echo Zulu to win the Fair Grounds Oaks. The meet’s leading older dirt-route horse, Olympiad, twice shipped from Florida for trainer Bill Mott, winning the Mineshaft Stakes and the New Orleans Classic