Kentucky September dates become a battleground

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- A squabble between Kentucky Downs and Churchill Downs over September race dates has erupted for the second straight year, with Kentucky regulators asking the tracks to work out their differences or have the issue settled for them.

Details of the disagreement emerged publicly for the first time on Tuesday at a meeting of the dates committee of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which annually vets the dates requests for racetracks before making a recommendation on the next year’s live-racing calendar to the full commission. At the end of the meeting, Robert Beck, the chairman of the committee and of the full commission, warned the tracks that if they did not iron out their own agreement, the committee would recommend a calendar it preferred.

“You may like it even less,” Beck said.

Once again this year, Kentucky Downs requested dates during its usual allotment, in September. But approval of that allotment has been complicated since Churchill Downs also began running in September three years ago, after wresting the September dates from Turfway Park.

The Kentucky Downs dates have become especially irritating to Churchill over the past two years, as Kentucky Downs has steadily built up its all-turf racing program using revenues from its slot-machine parlor. In 2014 and 2015, the average purse distribution per day at Kentucky Downs has been approximately $1 million, and fields have averaged more than 10 horses per race. Forty-percent of those horses, both tracks agree, are ship-ins from Churchill, which allows for stabling year-round. Kentucky Downs does not have any stabling.

For 2016, Kentucky Downs requested seven dates, on Thursdays and Saturdays throughout September, while Churchill requested a minimum of 12 September dates, on a Friday through Sunday schedule. Churchill officials also told the dates committee that they would prefer to run on a Thursday through Sunday schedule, but only if the September dates did not overlap with a Kentucky Downs meet.

Although those were the formal dates requests, it was revealed at the committee meeting that Churchill and Keeneland had last week submitted a joint proposal to the dates committee outlining a way for Kentucky Downs to run in August at the same time as Ellis Park. Although the dates committee did not discuss the specifics of the proposal at the meeting, all of the members of the committee made comments indicating that they had discussed the plan at length with each other, including the legal arguments that would be used to support or oppose a vote by the committee on the plan.

Keeneland submitted the joint proposal with Churchill out of concern that Kentucky Downs is encroaching on its own meet as its dates requests run deeper and deeper into September, Keeneland officials said. That forces the tracks to compete increasingly for the same pool of horses. This year, for example, the last date on Kentucky Downs’s request was Sept. 29, compared to Sept. 19 this year.

David Royce, the attorney representing Keeneland and Churchill on the matter, said that Kentucky Downs’s recent success reflected well on the strength of the Kentucky circuit, but he also said that the track’s race dates would create a stronger circuit if they were in August, even if that meant competing for horses and for handicapping dollars with Saratoga and Del Mar.

“We have an opportunity to create a stable race schedule that benefits the racetracks and the commonwealth of Kentucky,” Royce told the committee.

Corey Johnsen, the co-owner and president of Kentucky Downs, made the argument that regulators shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, countering that the track has achieved its remarkable growth while racing during September. He also said that Kentucky Downs would face far more competition from tracks with turf racing if its dates were moved to August, at a time when its turf course might not fare as well due to the hotter weather.

“It’s very difficult when you are an all-turf track to compete against Saratoga and Arlington … and Del Mar,” Johnsen said. “There’s a lot of great turf racing going on in August.”

Ellis Park officials also objected to the Churchill-Keeneland proposal, stating that the committee should honor the “usual and customary” dates of the tracks involved.

While the squabble over a handful of dates might appear minor, the disagreement between the two tracks has an outsized profile among the handicapping community. Some handicappers are still sore at Churchill for raising its takeouts two years ago, while revering Kentucky Downs for dropping some of its takeout rates and consistently offering full fields. To those, anything Kentucky Downs wants, it should get, especially if the only victim is Churchill.

If past-performance is any guide – and if comments by dates committee members can be taken at the implied value – Kentucky Downs is likely to have its meet pushed back toward or into August, whether voluntarily or through a vote. After the meeting was over on Tuesday, officials and attorneys of all the involved tracks – Churchill, Kentucky Downs, Keeneland, and Ellis – met for a private discussion over the proposal. The dates committee will meet once again this month to hear the final arguments; statute requires the dates to be awarded by Nov. 1.