Hawthorne will ask Ill. board to OK cancellation of Monday races
Faced with an ongoing shortage of horses, Hawthorne management will ask for the second straight year to cancel all the Monday race dates it had been given for its Thoroughbred meet.
“We’re just staying at two days per week for racing,” Hawthorne racing director Jim Miller said in a Friday text message to Horse Racing Nation.
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Presuming the Illinois Racing Board approves, Monday races scheduled between Aug. 4 and the end of the Thoroughbred meet Nov. 3 will be erased from the calendar. The IRB will hear Hawthorne’s formal request when it meets Thursday in Chicago.
Hawthorne currently hosts Thoroughbred cards Thursdays and Sundays. It already had rescheduled live races that would have coincided with the three Saturdays of the Triple Crown in May and June. Eliminating Mondays this year would reduce the 2025 meet from 80 to 66 days.
Last July, Hawthorne reduced its racing week from three days to two by calling off the rest of its Saturday cards, leaving the 2024 meet with 68 dates mostly on Sundays and Thursdays.
Completion of a track casino that could stoke purses and maybe lure breeding and racing interests back to Chicagoland has been put off for six years by Hawthorne management. President and general manager Tim Carey, whose family owns the track, has told the IRB that “tens of millions” of dollars have been invested but that he is bound by legal agreements to keep the reasons for the delay quiet from the public.
With the current uncertainty at Hawthorne coupled with the 2021 closing and eventual demolition of Arlington Park, Illinois racing has suffered through a precipitous downturn. The state foal crop fell from 141 to 84 between 2021 and 2023, according to the most recent records available from The Jockey Club. That represents a 40% drop since Churchill Downs Inc. shut down Arlington and a 91% plunge from the 973 foals in 2004.
Dates for 2026 at Hawthorne and in the south at Fairmount Park are expected to be awarded during the IRB’s Sept. 18 meeting.