Track plans to hold 84-day meet

Turf Paradise in Phoenix will run after all in 2021.

Two months after the track’s owner told state regulators he had no plans to run next year, Turf Paradise and its horsemen on Friday announced a deal to run 84 live racing days during a meet starting Jan. 2 and running through May 1.

The agreement ends months of speculation about the short-term future of the track. Track officials have been meeting with horsemen for a month in an effort to craft a live-racing agreement that would be acceptable to both sides, and on Friday night they said that they had reached a deal with the help of the state’s director of racing, Rudy Casillas.

“Many thanks to both of you for finally reaching terms to allow for the racing industry to move forward,” said Casillas, in a letter to the track’s owner, Jerry Simms, and the head of the local horsemen’s group, Bob Hutton.

Relations between management at Turf Paradise and its horsemen have been sour for some time, and it’s not immediately clear if the one-year deal will lead to an improvement in the outlook for racing in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country.

The meet will mean relief to local horsemen and other trainers who race at Northwestern tracks in the summer and migrate to Arizona in the winter.

Live racing will be conducted on a five-day-perweek schedule, the track said. The stable area will open Nov. 25, and training will begin Dec. 2.

Simms had cited the coronavirus outbreak when he told the Arizona Racing Commission in mid-August that the track did not plan to run a 2021 meet. While hard-hit earlier in the summer, Arizona’s cases have slowed considerably and the economy is nearly fully open.

“We’re happy for our horsemen that they’re going to be racing,” Simms said in a press release. “Unfortunately, we still have to deal with COVID-19, and we will.”