Hawthorne to race Thoroughbreds during spring and summer in 2023

Summer Thoroughbred racing is coming back to Chicago – just not at Arlington Park.

The Illinois Racing Board on Thursday approved 2023 racing dates for the two remaining racetracks in Illinois, with Hawthorne scheduled to host a 68-day Thoroughbred meet spanning March 4 through Sept. 4.

That’s a major change from the Thoroughbred schedule this year. Hawthorne ran a spring meet from early April through mid-June, switched over to a summer harness-racing season, and on Friday was to begin a fall-winter meet.

Hawthorne is the only remaining track in Chicago, Thoroughbred or Standardbred, following the 2021 decision by Churchill Downs Inc. to close Arlington Park, which for decades had hosted an important summer race meet. The Chicago Bears entered into a purchase agreement (expected to close in 2023) with CDI, and the team plans to move to the former Arlington property.

This year’s schedule required Illinois Thoroughbred horsemen to find a place to stable for three summer months during the harness season at Hawthorne, which will host a 49-day Standardbred meet next year running from Sept. 9 through Dec. 31.

“Not perfect,” said David McCaffrey, executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. “Probably as good as we were going to do.”

Fairmount Park in downstate Illinois near St. Louis was approved for a 62-raceday meet next year from April 18 through Nov. 18. Fairmount will race Tuesdays and Saturdays, running Tuesday afternoon cards and Saturday night programs.

Hawthorne has two-day weeks, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, during March, April, and May before adding Wednesday evening cards from June to its early September closing.

Hawthorne will be open for training beginning Jan. 1, giving horsemen more time to prepare for the racing season than has been possible in recent years.

Still, racing in Chicago, once a national hotspot for the sport, remains in danger. Jamming both breeds into one venue always will impose logistical complication, and Illinois is one of the last racing jurisdictions where purse money is generated almost entirely through betting on horse races, rather than casino games. Hawthorne began work on a casino in September 2020, but construction ceased early in 2021 and the casino project, cloaked in uncertainty, has yet to resume. Hawthorne officials before the spring 2022 meet said they hoped to start work again this summer. That didn’t happen, and without an external purse-revenue stream, Chicago racing could face something graver than the summer Thoroughbred pause of 2022.