Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Turf course should help track weather fierce competition
Fair Grounds got hit by a hurricane but dodged a bullet.
The Churchill Downs Inc.-owned New Orleans racecourse opens its 2021-22 meet down two barns thanks to the summer winds of Hurricane Ida, but still has use of its turf course when the 80-day season begins Thursday.
Fair Grounds annually hosts the popular New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival after the early spring end to its racing season. By the time the next meeting begins in the fall, the turf course has recovered from the trampling and crushing during the festival. JazzFest was canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19 and initially rescheduled for Oct. 8-17 this fall before a COVID surge led organizers to pull the plug in August. Had the festival gone forward as planned, Fair Grounds wouldn’t have conducted turf racing until early 2022, which would have caused an entry crunch and compromised many leading stables.
As it is, Fair Grounds begins its season with a moderately reduced purse structure and a new regional competitor in Oaklawn Park, which moved the start of its racing season from January to Dec. 3 this winter. The Fair Grounds meet also runs concurrently with Delta Downs, a 3 1/2-hour drive west of New Orleans. Delta’s purses are comparable to those at Fair Grounds, while Oaklawn, which will run 63 days this season, offers much greater prize money, but neither neighbor has a turf course.
Fair Grounds, according to racing secretary Scott Jones, will pay an average of $375,000 per day in purses, including the $7.8 million stakes schedule and about $285,000 per day in overnight money. Maiden special weight races are worth $45,000 to start this meet compared to $47,000 last November, emblematic of year-over-year reductions to start the season. The purse account took a hit when Fair Grounds’s 14 offtrack betting parlors and its casino had to be shuttered for a few weeks after Ida stormed through New Orleans on Aug. 29. Jones said increases during the meet are plausible.
A meaningfully enhanced purse structure, however, lies just over the horizon with the passage of legislation this past summer permitting sports betting and historical horse racing machines – de facto slots – at offtrack betting parlors. Fair Grounds has to complete licensing procedures to begin taking bets through both platforms, but has readied a space near its paddock to function as a sportsbook. The purse account receives 2.5 percent of every sports bet.
The hurricane damaged the track’s infield tote board beyond repair (a temporary board is in place for this meet) as well as two barns that housed 104 total stalls, leaving the track with about 1,720 stalls, though Jones said CDI intends to replace the lost stall space for the 2022-23 meet. Nearly half the track’s stables remained empty as of Nov. 20 as Kentucky horsemen await the end of the Churchill meet later this month before shipping south. Most of the better young horses wintering in New Orleans don’t race until mid-December at the earliest. Still the racing office will rely on the higher-end performers to fill early programs. There are only two claiming races on Thursday’s nine-race card, three on Friday, and just two Saturday.
“We’re going to struggle with the lowerlevel races,” Jones said.
Trainers new to Fair Grounds this season or back after an absence include Eddie Kenneally, who has 26 stalls, and Saffie Joseph Jr., who said he was given 15 stalls. Also with 15 stalls is Chicagoan Hugo Rodriguez, whose father, Eduardo Rodriguez, is a longtime Fair Grounds habitué dating to his days as assistant to the late trainer Tom Tomillo. Jason Barkley, Juan Cano, former Hugh Robertson assistant Elias Lopez, and Angel Miguel Silva also were awarded stalls.
All four trainers who won more than 30 races last meet – Ron Faucheux, Brad Cox, Steve Asmussen, and Tom Amoss – will make their presence felt.
Jockeys not based at Fair Grounds last season but expected to hang their tack in New Orleans this winter include Jareth Loveberry. Reylu Gutierrez, Deshawn Parker, Juan Vargas, Orlando Mojica, Emanuel Nieves, and Shane Laviolette. Angel Suarez returns after missing most of the 2020-21 meeting because of injury.
The opening-day card begins at noon but regular first post is 1:05 p.m. Central. The $1 million Louisiana Derby and its attendant important stakes are run March 26, while much of the rest of the stakes schedule is clustered on multi-stakes cards Dec. 26, Jan. 22, and Feb. 19. And that summer COVID spike that mercifully spelled the end of the October JazzFest has subsided; there’ll be fans in the stands again at Fair Grounds.