Spring meet opens amid dark times

Chicago horse racing got into the news in late February for all the wrong reasons – namely, its supposedly imminent demise. Churchill Downs Inc., parent company of Arlington Park, announced 2021 would be the last year of racing at Arlington, one of the country’s flagship racecourses, its grandstand and stables slated for demolition, the land on which they sit for sale to suburban developers.

Many racing people seemed to forget or overlook that a second Chicago-area track persists, and Hawthorne Racecourse opens its 2021 spring meet Saturday.

CDI at least paid lip service to the notion of moving Arlington’s racetrack operator license to a different location, but that is a far, far easier suggestion than actual undertaking. For the time being, when Arlington shuts its doors, Hawthorne will be the only remaining branch on the Chicago racing tree, which once grew strong and proud with four different Thoroughbred tracks in simultaneous existence.

The Hawthorne facility already has been gutted, not for destruction, but to make way for a racino that could open as soon as next winter. That’s a last lifeline for Chicago horsemen, and for now, this spring, the sport barely is staying afloat here. Just 51 horses were entered on Saturday’s eight-race program, a desperately short number. The backstretch as of this week housed only about 500 horses.

“I think the worst we ever had for the spring meet was 700-something,” racing secretary Allen Plever said.

That number will grow through the spring, and entries right now are hurt by a spell of winter weather in downstate Illinois. During March, Hawthorne, which lost its spring 2020 meet to COVID-19, relies on ship-ins from Fairmount Park, but the Fairmount track was closed to training for three weeks and the horses stabled there are just getting ready. To try and lure entrants from anywhere in the region, Hawthorne is paying a $150 shipping bonus this spring.

“We’ll be all right eventually. Turfway closes soon, then Delta and Fair Grounds. There’ll be more horses here before too long,” Plever said.

Plever and the racing office only have to fill two cards per week, with racing set for Saturdays and Sundays, the meet ending April 25. Purses are expected to be roughly the same as they were last fall and winter, which is to say not especially high. Opening-day purses total $102,000, which should be fairly standard. Illinois-bred maidens run for a $22,000 pot.

Hawthorne runs late-afternoon, early-evening cards, first post set for 3:10 p.m. Central. COVID-19 restrictions still prevail, though Hawthorne will permit 250 spectators for its racing programs. There’s a nominal opening-day feature, too, race 7, a second-level allowance race open to $20,000 claimers and carded for 5 1/2 furlongs. This race has several plausible winners, with Trappe Valley the likely favorite, but the pick is Tak, who ended 2020 with a pair of Hawthorne wins and from the look of his work pattern has kept fit during the winter dark period.