Harrah’s Columbus, the first new racetrack to be built in Nebraska in decades, is set to open its inaugural meet Friday with purses augmented by revenues from a casino attached to the track. Five races are scheduled for the opening card, which attracted only 26 total starters. Two of the races drew fields of four, while the $15,000 Amadevil Stakes for Nebraska-breds attracted seven horses. The new track, located in its namesake city, is part of a mini-boom of racing in Nebraska that was set off by the approval in 2020 of a referendum allowing for casino gambling provided the casinos were located at racetracks. Six tracks have already opened or are in the process of opening to exploit the money-making opportunity. Harrah’s Columbus is the first track of the six to be built from the ground up, and the first in Nebraska to feature a one-mile main track. Columbus has a population of about 25,000 people and is located a 90-minute drive from Omaha, Nebraska’s most populous city. Columbus will run 15 total days of racing over five weeks, Friday through Sunday until Sept. 15. The track’s condition book offers six races per day, along with four extras, but the opening-day fields indicate that the track may struggle to fill its races. Racing fans outside Nebraska also won’t be able to bet on Columbus’s races. The state’s racing commission and its horsemen have pushed tracks to reject the jurisdiction of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which would have required the tracks to comply with HISA’s safety regulations and drug-testing program. Under HISA’s federal enabling legislation, any track that does not comply with the regulations cannot send its signal out of state. The 2020 referendum authorizing racetrack casinos was pitched to voters as a way to raise money for property-tax relief, with 70 percent of the state’s share of casino funds dedicated to tax reduction. Unlike in some other states that have tied casino licenses to racing licenses, the statute does not require a set portion of casino revenues to be used to subsidize purses. Instead, horsemen in the state negotiate purses with the track operator. Current law requires all racetracks in the state to run five live racing dates per year beginning in 2025. The live-racing requirement balloons to a minimum of 15 days for each track in 2031, though the tracks as a whole are required to run a total of 120 days in that year, meaning some tracks will take a larger load than others. “For Nebraska, that’s pretty huge,” said Casey Ricketts, the interim executive director of the Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission. “We’re hoping to exceed that and maybe even go a little further.” Ricketts said that the referendum has re-invigorated the racing community in Nebraska, which has been moribund since the closure of Ak-Sar-Ben in 1995. Ak-Sar-Ben, located in Omaha, was once a hub of racing for the great plains, but competition from racinos recently authorized in surrounding states in the 1990s led to the track’s business declining precipitously. Now, horsemen are looking toward the long-term, said Ricketts, who predicted that the state’s vanishingly small breeding industry may pick up over the next several years. “We’re in a great position right now, but it’s up to our stakeholders to keep that momentum going,” she said. An earlier version of this story said that Harrah's Columbus would run six live racing days. The track is running 15 live racing dates this year. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.