Million Day lineup adds Sea O'Erin Mile

CHICAGO - Arlington Park and Hawthorne Race Course announced their 2007 stakes schedules late Tuesday, both of which were approved by the Illinois Racing Board in a meeting Tuesday morning in Chicago.

Neither track introduced any radical changes, but Arlington shuffled a couple of its stakes around, created a multiple stakes program in September, and added a restricted race to its calendar. Hawthorne dropped two stakes from its spring meet.

Arlington, which begins a 94-day meet on May 4, has scheduled 27 stakes worth $5,525,000 this year, the stakes schedule highlighted as always by Arlington Million Day, which is Aug. 11 this year. But rather than being supported just by overnight stakes races, Million Day's three Grade 1 turf races will be bolstered by the Sea O'Erin Stakes, which was moved up on the calendar for 2007. Pushed back from its typical late June date was the Prairie State Festival for Illinois-breds, scheduled this year for July 7.

Also this year, the Arlington-Washington Futurity and the Arlington-Washington Lassie, coupled on one card in recent years, will be run on separate days, the Lassie on Saturday, Sept. 8, the Futurity on Sunday, Sept. 9. Two other stakes, the Pucker Up and Matron will also be run on Sept. 8, giving the meet a late-season high point.

An unnamed stakes race for Illinois-owned horses has been added to the 2007 schedule on Arlington's closing weekend.

Hawthorne has taken over National Jockey Club's spring race dates in 2007, and did not bring back two stakes supporting the spring meet's signature event, the Illinois Derby, which will be run this year on April 7. Both the $100,000 Meafara Stakes and the $100,000 Lost Code are gone from the 2007 Hawthorne schedule. The highlight of the fall meet, the Hawthorne Gold Cup, will be run Saturday, Sept. 29.