Indiana Derby scheduled for July 8, will offer Derby points

The Grade 3 Indiana Derby, newly designated as a race earning points toward qualifying for the rescheduled Kentucky Derby, will be held July 8, a Wednesday, according to the track where the race is held.

Indiana Grand, which is hoping to reopen June 15, announced the date of the race Tuesday, along with the rest of the stakes races that the track is hoping to run during a rescheduled meet running through Nov. 18. The track also released its first condition book for the upcoming meet.

The $300,000 Indiana Derby, scheduled for 1 1/8 miles, will award 20 points to the winner this year toward qualifying for the Kentucky Derby on Sept. 5 at Churchill Downs. The race was run last year with a purse of $500,000 and at a distance of 1 1/16 miles, but Indiana Grand said that the track needed to make adjustments to its purse schedule due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to the closing of a casino attached to the track that provided subsidies for purses, as well as OTBs throughout the state.

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Despite that, the condition book released Tuesday maintains overnight purses at substantially similar levels than last year.

“We had to make some tweaks to the previously released stakes calendar in order to account for the condensed meet and interruption in our business,” said Kevin Greeley, the track’s director of racing. “But we’re happy to bring back our overnight races at 2019 levels and only needed slight modifications to the stakes program to do so. We’ll see how some of these changes fare in 2020 and use that as a basis for our overnight and stakes program in 2021.”

Indiana Grand still needs approval from the state racing commission to run its revised meet. The track, which was initially scheduled to open April 14, has asked for approval of 94 days of mixed racing. Racing will be conducted on a Monday through Thursday schedule, with first post every day at 2:20 p.m. Eastern.

Indiana Grand had approximately 100 horses on its grounds when it opened the stable area last week. Training began last Wednesday.

The revised stakes schedule includes 34 stakes with total purses of $3.2 million. Last year, the track held 35 stakes with total purses of $4.3 million, over 120 days of racing. Twenty-eight of the stakes run this year will be held for Indiana-sired or Indiana-bred horses.

The $200,000 Indiana Oaks also is scheduled for the same day as the Indiana Derby. The race will be run at the same distance as last year, 1 1/16 miles, with the same purse.