Kentucky Downs opens five-day meet with stakes trio

The four-stakes card at Churchill will overlap in large part with a 10-race program at Kentucky Downs, the turf-only track that opens a five-day meet Saturday with three stakes. In those races:

◗ $250,000 Dueling Grounds Derby (race 9): Global View and Medal Count are the biggest names among 10 3-year-olds in the inaugural running of this 1 5/16-mile race.

◗ $200,000 Kentucky Downs Juvenile Fillies (race 8): Saratoga maiden winner So Cal could be a slight favorite in a very well-matched field of 12 in this seven-furlong race.

◗ $200,000 Kentucky Downs Juvenile (race 7): Luck of the Kitten, a smart winner on the Arlington Million card for owner-breeders Ken and Sarah Ramsey, is one of a handful of contenders in a field of 10.

Very much worth noting: Half of the purses for all Kentucky Downs stakes is actually bonus money from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund, i.e., a $200,000 race is actually $100,000, plus another $100,000 for distribution to KTDF-eligible runners.

An identical 50-50 split exists for purses for allowances and 2-year-old maiden races. Clearly, it will behoove horsemen to run Kentucky-breds at Kentucky Downs.

Unlike the coordinated efforts undertaken for years by Kentucky Downs and Turfway Park, there will be no interspersing of races for wagering purposes among Churchill and Kentucky Downs. The Saturday cards are independent of each other, although post times appear to have been set to avoid undue overlaps. First posts: Churchill, 12:45 p.m. Eastern; Kentucky Downs, 2:35 p.m. Eastern.

Kentucky Downs will overlap just once more with Churchill (Sept. 13) while running the next three Wednesdays: Sept. 10, 17, 24.

The richest day at Kentucky Downs will be Sept. 13, when four stakes, topped by the $600,000 Kentucky Turf Cup, will be run.

Among the jockeys who will be in action on certain dates at Kentucky Downs are Rafael Bejarano, Kent Desormeaux, Brice Blanc, and apprentice Drayden Van Dyke, all in from Southern California.

Some jockeys’ agents had a difficult time deciding where to send their riders Saturday. Nobody can be in two places at once, of course, and the rich races at both Kentucky tracks had agents agonizingly calculating which spot would benefit them most.

All of which calls to mind what agent Ron Anderson once famously said about jockey Jerry Bailey: “I wish I could clone him.”