Turfway pricing out Instant Racing machines

Turfway general manager Chip Bach said final pricing quotes are being aggregated by the track’s majority owner, Rock Gaming of Detroit, and that an announcement concerning the installation of some 250 Instant Racing machines at the track could be made soon.

“Hopefully we’ll know something in the next couple of weeks,” Bach said Thursday.

Turfway will become the fourth site in Kentucky to host the slots-like “historical racing” which uses the results of previously run races to determine the winners. The others are Kentucky Downs near Franklin, Ellis Park in Henderson, and the partnership of Keeneland and the Red Mile in Lexington. Percentages of Instant Racing revenues are used to fuel purses.

Rock Gaming owns 90 percent of Turfway, with Keeneland having the other 10 percent.

◗ A pretty good allowance race serves as the nominal Sunday feature at Turfway, with Swept Up likely to come favored off an easy victory last month for trainer Charlie LoPresti. The 5-year-old mare will have Parc Celeste and Sweetsoutherndame as her chief opposition in a six-furlong second-level allowance that goes as the seventh of nine races. The $22,300 purse includes $10,500 in bonuses from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund. First post is 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

◗ There will be no racing at Turfway on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday. Racing continues on a Thursday-through-Sunday schedule through the end of February, with a Friday-through-Sunday schedule in effect through the end of the meet, April 3.

◗ Field size through the first eight programs of the winter-spring meet, which began Jan. 1, averaged 9.6 horses per race. The average at the 15-day holiday meet, which ran Dec. 3-31, was 10.2.