Mother Nature doing her best to ensure soggy turf for Breeders' Cup

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A little after 9:30 Thursday morning one of the best racehorses in the world, Enable, walked across the Churchill Downs main track and onto the grass course – and went squish.

Rain was falling onto the filly’s back and onto the blue coat and helmet of her rider, jockey Frankie Dettori.

In fact, rain had been falling at Churchill for about 22 hours, never especially heavy, but never letting up, either. The rain was forecast to continue into Thursday evening. At 9 a.m. Thursday, the rain gauge the Churchill track maintenance staff has set up near the turf course showed 1.7 inches of rain had fallen so far. That total seems nearly certain to cross the two-inch threshold before this slow-moving precipitation moves out of the area Friday.

The turf was labeled yielding for training Thursday. Dettori termed it “very soft,” while jockey Oisin Murphy, who also galloped over the course, called it “soft.”

Churchill track superintendent Jamie Richardson said the turf here is never what would properly be called soft. The course is sand-based, and horses don’t sink down into it, Richardson said, like they would on truly soft course.

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There was a 30 percent chance of rain Friday, but even if it doesn’t rain the weather will be cloudy and chilly, with a high only around 50 degrees. There won’t be a great amount of drying on the surface, but the course will be draining all along – with help from the track maintenance crew.

There are 66 drainage tubes set up around the seven-furlong turf oval, some draining to the outside of the course but more down below the hedge bordering the inside of the course. Once the rain subsides here later Thursday, the maintenance crew will attach pumps, running them five minutes each, to all the access points along all those tubes. Those pumps will suck water out of the course, so while Mother Nature might not be helping dry the lawn, the water will be coming out of it through human ingenuity.

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Still, while the course might not be truly soft for the Saturday Breeders’ Cup races it definitely will be wet. The temporary inner rail will be taken down for Friday races opening several paths nearest the hedge that haven’t been used since June. That swath or course glows a lush green, but since the track is cambered down to the hedge, that fresh ground also is softer than the outer portion of the course. Jockeys will have a lot of decisions to make because of the weather – as will the bettors.