Kentucky, Chicago horses boost Colonial meet
It’s starting to feel almost normal again. Colonial Downs in New Kent, Va., opens a 27-day racing season Monday, the fourth year in a row the track has conducted a summer meeting.
This is the most substantial meet yet since Colonial reopened as a racino under the new management of The Colonial Downs Group in 2019 following five years with no racing – though the Virginia racing landscape is changing again. Colonial’s owners, Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, this past winter entered into a purchase agreement with Churchill Downs Inc. that includes Colonial as well as several other gambling holdings and development opportunities. The CDI acquisition was expected to close at the end of 2022.
Whatever the future holds under CDI, Colonial this season hopes to maintain momentum established by the current ownership and management group – which has been substantial with regard to racing. The 2019 meet included just 144 races, but that went up to 205 in 2021, and Colonial races six more days in 2022 than last year. Average daily purses, including stakes, were more than $500,000 in 2021 and are scheduled to top $600,000 this year, according to racing secretary Allison De Luca.
“We’re overfilled with allotted stalls,” De Luca said. “We’re doing pretty well. We had a big response. I hope we’re going to have a big meet here.”
Last summer, Kentucky horsemen were seeking stabling while Churchill Downs was closed during the installation of a new turf course, and they strongly supported the Colonial meet. Some of those outfits – like Michelle Lovell, Mike Tomlinson, and Tom Vance – have stalls again for 2022, but the new blood this season comes from Chicago. With Arlington shuttered, leading Chicago trainer Larry Rivelli has a full complement of horses stabled at Colonial, while Chris Block took 30 stalls. Kentucky trainers Ian Wilkes, Bret Calhoun, and Dallas Stewart who had stalls last summer are expected to ship regularly, De Luca said. Steve Asmussen also took out a dozen stalls this season.
The first two cards of the season were drawn as of Friday and have plenty of runners coming from Maryland and Florida. The jockey colony is a hodgepodge. New arrival Jareth Loveberry will have ample business from his Chicago connections.
Colonial races three-day weeks, Monday through Wednesday, with first post set for 1:45 p.m. Eastern. Some cards conclude with a couple jump races, and the racing program, owing to Colonial’s massively wide turf course, is very grass heavy. Last year, 148 of 205 races were run on the turf course, which accommodates multiple lanes on a single card. Overall, Colonial averaged 8.36 starters per race in 2021 (favorites won at a 35 percent clip), a number that rose to about 9 on turf. The track encourages participation with $1,000 starting bonuses to owners and $300 to trainers for every horse that runs.
Colonial expanded its stakes schedule for 2022 and will pay out $3,575,000 in stakes purses. The most important stakes day comes Tuesday, Sept. 6, with a card anchored by the $300,000 Virginia Derby and $200,000 Virginia Oaks.
Colonial has introduced a bettor-friendly 12-percent takeout pick five on the last five races of each card. If no one picks all five winners, 75 percent of the pool carries over to the next card and 25 percent, less takeout, is paid to tickets with the most winners in the sequence.
Monday’s opening card includes four $125,000 Virginia-restricted turf stakes, including the Edward P. Evans, carded as race 8.
Largent, with Paco Lopez named to ride for Todd Pletcher, will be heavily favored in the Evans, which he won in 2020. But Colonial players might do well to dig a little deeper. Largent was defeated this past winter at Gulfstream Park as a 3-5 stakes favorite, and coming back from yet another long break in a layoff-laden career, the 6-year-old likely is not going to produce one of his top performances.
Passion Play makes his first start since winning last year’s Evans in September, but he’s fired fresh before for trainer Mary Eppler. Also worth a long look is 12-1 morning-line shot Alex Joon, who has made only three starts on grass and makes just his third start since being claimed over the winter by trainer Lindsay Schultz, recently on a good run at Monmouth Park.
Determined Kingdom, 5-1 on the track’s morning line, could be worth a bet in the 5 1/2-furlong Punch Line Stakes, race 6.
Boldor, a 6-year-old, and Elusive Mischief, a 7-year-old, finished one-two in the 2021 Punch Line and return for Monday’s running. But neither has anything like the upside of 3-year-old Determined Kingdom. Determined Kingdom, who gets four pounds from his older rivals, debuted in a turf-sprint stakes over the Colonial course last summer and finished eighth. Trainer Phil Schoenthal added blinkers to the gelding’s race-day equipment following that start, and Forbidden Kingdom has run nine times since, going 3 for 3 in turf sprints. He rallied into a slow pace to beat older second-level allowance foes last out at Laurel, and he might get your Colonial wagering season off to a profitable start.