LEXINGTON, Ky. - After avoiding historical horse racing machines for years, Churchill Downs Inc. is suddenly interested. Very interested. On Tuesday, the company received approval from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to install up to 2,500 of the devices, which are remarkably similar to slot machines, at Turfway Park in northern Kentucky, a track it purchased just one month ago. In addition, the KHRC approved the installation of up to 3,000 of the devices between Derby City Gaming, a casino Churchill owns in Louisville, and Churchill Downs itself. Detailed plans for both projects have yet to be worked out, and the approval for the Louisville devices was called a “first step” in the company’s proposal to build an all-new casino area at Churchill Downs. Earlier this year, the company’s chief executive, Bill Carstanjen, said on a conference call with analysts that Churchill had plans to build the casino area and a hotel at the track, but said details of the plans would not be released until later this year. Although the first historical horse racing machines in the state were installed at Kentucky Downs in 2012, Churchill refrained from installing any of the devices until last year, when it built Derby City Gaming at its Trackside training center. Since then, those devices have surpassed all of the company’s expectations, leading to renewed interest in the machines. In addition, Kentucky holds a gubernatorial election on Tuesday, and the Democratic challenger, Andy Beshear, has said that he will push the legislature to legalize casinos, and racetracks are expected to be leading candidates for casino licenses if Beshear is elected and the effort is successful. The incumbent, Matt Bevin, opposes casino gambling. (The legislative prospects for casinos got murkier this week when representatives of the Republican legislative leadership team, including Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, said they would block any attempt to legalize casinos. Thayer, a horse industry advocate, had previously supported casinos at tracks.) CDI bought Turfway after the company submitted an application in September for a new casino and racetrack in Turfway’s market area. That led Turfway’s current owners, who had resisted installing historical horse racing machines at the track in order to protect a Cincinnati casino, to strike a deal to sell the track to Churchill. * Also at the KHRC meeting Tuesday, Churchill received approval to launch a Single Pick 6 bet, a jackpot wager that only awards the entire pool in the case of a single winning ticket, during the Turfway Park meet that begins in December. The bet, which will have a takeout of 15 percent, has proved popular at other racetracks across the U.S. * The KHRC approved racing dates for 2020 that are substantially similar to last year, with the exception of the week leading up to the Labor Day holiday. This year, Kentucky Downs will run on Sept. 2 and Sept. 7, Labor Day, while Ellis Park will run Sept. 3-6, with Sept. 3 being an “optional” day for the track. That schedule was worked out between the two tracks to accommodate Kentucky Downs’s request to run seven live racing dates next year. This year, the track ran five. * To get a grasp on how unusual the five breakdowns were at the Keeneland fall meet, just look at the results for the three meets in Kentucky that preceded it. According to figures provided to the commission Tuesday by equine medical director Dr. Bryce Howard, there were two racing fatalities from 2,002 starts during Ellis’s summer meet. At Kentucky Downs, there were zero fatalities from 563 starts. And at Churchill Downs’s September meet, there was one fatality from 1,011 starters. That works out to 0.83 fatalities per 1,000 starts for all three meets, well below the national average. At Keeneland’s October meet, three of the racing fatalities occurred on the track’s turf course, after a September in which no rain was recorded to have fallen in Lexington. The other two were on the dirt course. In total this year, Keeneland had nine fatalities during its spring and fall meets, the highest number since the track began providing injury records to a national database launched in 2009, for a fatality rate approximately 50 percent higher than the national average.