Ellis Park plans to cut racing days this year and may close next year if Kentucky tracks can’t become competitive with their counterparts in other states where purses are supplemented by revenue from expanded gambling. Turfway Park and Kentucky Downs have indicated they may request fewer race dates in 2010.
Even mighty Churchill Downs, which currently plans to request the same number of dates for 2010, will “reassess” its position after this fall’s meet. If that reassessment leads to a change of plans, Keeneland would be the only track offering as much racing in 2010 as it does this year.
With so many gaps in the year-round racing circuit Kentucky has offered for decades, we would see a mass exodus of Kentucky-based racing operations forced by financial considerations to find such a circuit elsewhere.
“Kentucky’s signature industry … is fading away, folks, before our very eyes,” Ellis Park owner Ron Geary told the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission as he announced his track’s plans.
And fading very, very fast. Over the years, I’ve written several columns about the impending end of racing as we know it in Kentucky if lawmakers continued to deny tracks revenue from expanded gambling. Apparently, the end will come in 2010.
Larry Dale Keeling, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has spent most of his 35-plus years in journalism reporting on or writing editorials and columns about Kentucky’s politics and political issues. He now brings his experience and expertise on those topics to the KyKurmudgeon blog.
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