With ship righted, Canterbury sails into new meet

These might not be the best of times at Canterbury Park, but they are certainly not the worst, and in a generally moribund Midwest racing landscape, Canterbury begins a 70-day race meet Friday with at least a puff of wind in its sails.

Purses, competitive with regional competitors, are expected to gross about $15 million, up more than $1 million from 2017, and will be paid at an average of about $175,000 per day excluding stakes. Field size during the 2017 meeting came in at 8.05 starters for the 648 Thoroughbred races conducted during the meet and 9.07 in the 150 turf races, the best numbers since 2013. Handle rose marginally from 2016 to 2017, despite negative feedback from a vocal segment of the betting public after Canterbury axed an experiment in reduced takeout during the 2016 season.

“We’re really happy with how things came together this year,” said Andrew Offerman, director of racing at Canterbury, located in Shakopee, Minn., just south of the Twin Cities.

Canterbury’s bleak future brightened in 2012 when it reached an agreement with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux tribe operating a local casino that ended Canterbury’s bid to turn the track into a racino and directed millions of dollars of revenue from the tribal casino to Canterbury’s racing operation. Without a revenue stream beyond betting handle, Canterbury couldn’t possibly pay competitive purses.

Now the track operates in a period of relative stability, Offerman suggesting that 2018 “should be pretty similar to 2017.” Dual-breed racing is split 85 percent Thoroughbred, 15 percent Quarter Horse, with Quarter Horses generally placed at the beginning of race cards. Race weeks are two days – Friday and Saturday – the first three weeks of the season before expanding to four-day weeks, with racing Thursday through Sunday, in June and July. In August, Canterbury tries something new, swapping Sunday afternoons for Wednesday nights, before ending the season with a pair of two-day weeks in September.

Trainers Chris Richard, who has 24 stalls, and Joe Offolter, who has 30, didn’t stable at Canterbury last season but will operate strings this spring and summer. Mac Robertson is the perennial leading trainer and figures to win his share of races again in 2018. Home-grown jockey Alex Canchari’s decision to try Indiana and Kentucky this summer leaves 50 wins from the 2017 meet up for grabs in the riding colony.

March winds, rather than bringing April showers this year, brought an April 15 blizzard, and three weeks from opening, Canterbury lay under a heavy blanket of snow.

“The track crew did an amazing job,” Offerman said. “The main track and training track opened only a couple days behind schedule.”

Canterbury doesn’t card turf races until mid-May, and the grass-racing season, a healthy part of the program last year, should begin as usual.

Canterbury hosts 35 stakes races worth $2.38 million and moved its richest race, the $200,000 Mystic Lake Derby, from Aug. 26 last season to June 23. The Mystic Lake Derby, a one-mile grass race, will share a program with the $100,000 Mystic Lake Mile and the $100,000 Lady Canterbury.

There’s no stakes race on the eight-race Friday opener, with race 7, a Minnesota-bred first-level allowance race, the highest-class fare. Richard, the new Canterbury trainer, swings right into action here with U S Express, who races for prominent local owners Cheryl Sprick and Richard Bremer and looks like the horse to beat.