Fair Grounds returns to traditional Thanksgiving start

New Orleans is a city spinning on an axis of tradition, and Fair Grounds Race Course is getting back to its roots this year, returning to a traditional Thanksgiving Day meet opener for the first time since 2012.

But while there have been horse races run since roughly 1838 along Gentilly Boulevard in New Orleans, site of the current Churchill Downs Inc.-owned track, Fair Grounds even now casts about for its place in the winter racing landscape.

Regional rival Oaklawn Park's astronomical purses siphon horses starting in January, and the cash-flush Kentucky circuit – Churchill giving way in December to suddenly ascendant Turfway Park – plus competition for lower-level stock across the state at Delta Downs can put the squeeze on Fair Grounds. The track leans on young horses turning 3 during its racing season, plus a turf course that has held up very well since long-standing drainage problems were repaired several years ago.

A wet winter tamped down turf racing during the 2018-19 meet, when Fair Grounds ran only 216 grass races, 42 fewer than the previous season. What the track was awash in, however, was maiden special weight races, 124 of them (according to racing secretary Scott Jones) among 767 total Thoroughbred races. Purses for that sort of race are up $4,000 this season to $45,000 – good, but not Oaklawn or Churchill good.

The winners of the 2018 Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby, Serengeti Empress and Country House, both raced last season at Fair Grounds, though Country House shipped from Florida while Serengeti Empress was based in New Orleans with trainer Tom Amoss. Street Band, the 3-year-old filly who won the Grade 1 Cotillion at Parx Racing in September, also wintered at Fair Grounds, and nine out of the last 15 Kentucky Oaks winners have emerged from New Orleans.

Jones said that as of Nov. 22 Fair Grounds still had 700 open stalls awaiting horses shipping in from Churchill, which closes this weekend. Races in New Orleans also attract entrants from a bevy of training centers in Louisiana, particularly in the Lafayette area. Still, many of those horses race at Delta rather than Fair Grounds, and while the first three cards this meet all drew an average of more than 10 entrants per race, Fair Grounds can’t lean on bread-and-butter lower-level claimers like other venues.

“We struggled with the cheaper races last year and we will again this year,” Jones said.

Fair Grounds averaged 8.21 starters per race last season, a number comparable to much of the early 2000s, though the track was running about 140 more races per season then.

Against all odds, Brad Cox beat Joe Sharp in the Fair Grounds trainers’ race exactly 53 to 49 both of the last two meets; there’s little reason to believe those two barns won’t have comparable seasons. Monomoy Girl came out of Fair Grounds to win the 2018 Kentucky Oaks for Cox, and her brother, sharp recent Churchill maiden winner Mr. Monomoy, is bound for New Orleans this winter. Steve Asmussen, Amoss, Ron Faucheux, Mike Stidham, Mark Casse, and Al Stall were the names behind Cox and Sharp in last season’s trainer standings, and all figure to have a similar presence this meeting. Asmussen keeps many of his best horses at Fair Grounds this time of year – Midnight Bisou is training there now – but doesn’t necessarily race them in New Orleans. The Fair Grounds stakes schedule has a wealth of races in some divisions, like filly and mare turf sprints, but holes in others, like older female dirt routes.

The track is experimenting with a change in its 3-year-old series this year, lengthening all three dirt route races: The Lecomte on Jan. 18 now is 1 1/16 miles, the Risen Star on Feb. 18 is 1 1/8 miles, and the March 21 Louisiana Derby is 1 3/16 miles.

“We figured maybe it would help us stand out a little,” Jones said.

Fair Grounds has followed the lead of sister track Churchill Downs and done away this season with handicap races, the most prominent of which was the New Orleans Handicap.

There are no major new additions to the backstretch, but trainers with stalls this season who had none or only a couple last meet include Jack Sisterson, Chris Block, Josie Carroll, Kelsey Danner, and Lon Wiggins. Keith Desormeaux has bumped his string up to 16 stalls and his brother, Hall of Fame rider Kent Desormeaux, is a notable new addition to the jockey colony. Robby Albarado, who rode in Florida last winter, returns to New Orleans for this meet, while all the jockeys atop last season’s standings – Adam Beschizza, James Graham, Florent Geroux, Colby Hernandez, and Mitchell Murrill – are back this winter.

Standard first post is 12:30 p.m. Central, with some Friday evening exceptions and early starts for the major-stakes days, and the basic racing week most of the season is four days, Thursday through Sunday. Wednesdays are added in March after Mardi Gras has passed in February and the Southern heat is starting to descend on the Mississippi Delta. The Thanksgiving forecast calls for some sunshine and a high of 70 – and racing season is back in New Orleans.