Rain sure thing for opening night of spring meet

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Raining or not, few spirits will be dampened when Churchill Downs opens its 38-day spring meet Saturday with the 142nd Kentucky Derby lurking right around the corner.

Rain chances have been forecast at nearly 100 percent for an 11-race Downs After Dark opener that starts at 6 p.m. Eastern, but it’s a good thing the wet stuff is only passing through: The outlook beyond this weekend is very encouraging, with weathermen so far saying the chances of rain are minimal when the Kentucky Oaks and Derby are run May 6-7.

The opening-night feature is the $100,000 William Walker, a six-furlong race that drew just five 3-year-olds. Field size has been something of a problem for Churchill racing officials at recent spring meets, but the Derby and Oaks remain unaffected. Oversubscribed fields are expected for both, and some of the secondary features for Derby weekend, such as the Woodford Reserve Turf Classic, also are coming up huge.

Of course, not every day is Derby or Oaks Day, and therein lies an issue that has dogged Churchill racing officials in recent years, particularly in the spring, when not nearly as many 2-year-olds are race-ready. Counting the Walker, which is carded as race 7 (post, 9:05), a maximum of 86 horses will run Saturday night, a number commensurate with the average of 7.82 per race at the 2015 spring meet.

In any case, the stakes schedule remains very familiar, with the $2 million Derby and $1 million Oaks anchoring a slate of 26 stakes (all but three graded) worth $8.25 million. A few tweaks to the schedule include the renaming of the Firecracker to the $200,000 Wise Dan, a 1 1/16-mile turf race that now will be part of the June 18 Stephen Foster Handicap night, the highlight of the post-Derby segment of the meet.

Otherwise, Churchill hasn’t fixed what ain’t broke. As usual, the Derby, Oaks, and Woodford are part of a spectacular weekend offering 10 other graded stakes, including the La Troienne and Humana Distaff, both Grade 1 events. The grand total for stakes purses for the Oaks and Derby cards is more than $6.3 million. First post both days is 10:30 a.m.

The race for top trainer at a meet that runs through July 2 figures to boil down to Steve Asmussen, Mike Maker, and Dale Romans, while the barns of Mark Casse, D. Wayne Lukas, Brad Cox, Joe Sharp, Bill Mott, Chris Richard, Ken McPeek, and Tom Amoss also will be very active.

And then there’s the return of Jack Van Berg, the 79-year-old Hall of Fame trainer who has 30 horses in the Churchill stable area following a productive winter at Oaklawn Park, where he had 14 wins and 20 seconds. Van Berg was a mainstay of the Kentucky circuit in his prime years.

“I sold the farm I had here in 1991, so I guess that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been a regular,” said Van Berg, who said he was meeting with a realtor Thursday to find a place to stay locally. “I’m planning on sticking around through the fall meet. I’ll be based here during the summer and just ship horses out to run.”

Besides opening night, two other Downs After Dark cards are scheduled for later in the meet (June 18 and July 2), but those probably won’t be the only times the lights are used. Beginning May 12 and through meet’s end, Churchill will start its eight-race Twilight Thursday cards at 5 p.m., bumping up against dusk in the process.

Otherwise, first post is 12:45 p.m. daily, except for those cases already noted.