Turfway Park notes: Track prepares to transition to winter-spring meet

At Turfway Park, the holiday meet ends Tuesday and will be followed the next afternoon with opening day of the three-month winter-spring meet. Through Jan. 5, there will be just one dark day since racing resumed Thursday following the short Christmas break, and that is the coming Thursday (Jan. 2).

In January and February, Turfway will shorten up to a three-day schedule (Friday-Sunday). Stakes will be run every other Saturday, starting with the Jan. 4 Wintergreen and through the John Battaglia Memorial on March 1. The track’s signature event, the $550,000 Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati Spiral Stakes, is set for March 22.

Maintenance time

After training ends Tuesday morning, Churchill and its Trackside annex will close for about 10 weeks for regular backstretch maintenance, with reopening set as usual for early March. Major construction on the new 170-foot video board is scheduled to begin in mid-January.