Hawthorne wins approval to call off its Monday race dates

Hawthorne won unanimous approval Thursday from the Illinois Racing Board to drop all 14 of its Monday race dates for Thoroughbreds. It came only after the board and a horsemen’s group raised more pointed questions about a promised but unbuilt track casino that has been delayed six years and counting.

“We need it,” Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association president Chris Block said. “Otherwise we’re dead.”

At the IRB meeting in Chicago, Hawthorne racing director Jim Miller said the request to continue racing only two days a week was because the 635 horses stabled at the track fell short of expectations.

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“We had about 1,100 stalls applied for,” he said, adding later that he still hoped the current horse population would rise before the meet ends Nov. 2. “My hope is we can get, say, up to 750. I’m not talking like we’re going to go to 1,100, but if we can pick up maybe another 100 from these other locations (where summer meets end earlier), that’s going to provide that ability each racing week to get to that nine number (of races per day). We’re hoping for even a 10- or possibly 11-race card.”

During the current meet Hawthorne has run mostly seven and eight races on Thursdays and Sundays. It was much the same last year, when track also dropped plans to race a third day of the week. With the elimination of Mondays this year, the current meet will consist of 68 race days, two fewer than in 2024.

Block echoed what the IRB has heard for years. That the reduction of race dates comes with fewer horses, whose owners and trainers are repelled by smaller purses, which have been in need of money that could come from a track casino.

“We have the factor of two days a week. It’s just not good for horse racing,” Block said. “But it’s all we can do right now in Chicago. Until we get a racino up and running, this is what we’re faced with.”

Hawthorne’s money trouble was evidenced further at the start of Thursday’s 58-minute meeting when executive director Tony Somone of the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association said his organization was owed three months of required contributions totaling $154,700 from the mutuel pool for standardbred races.

“We need to be made whole, and we need to get even with them,” Somone said. “Is there any way this board can ask some questions, find out where the incoming money going and where it’s outgoing? Maybe they can pay us before they’re paying the other people that they owe.”

Somone’s plea came during a public-commentary period and was not an agenda item, so the IRB could not yet act on it.

When the board meets Sept. 18, it will decide on the racing dates for Hawthorne as well as Fairmount Park, the suburban St. Louis track that does have an operating casino to stoke its purses for Tuesday and Saturday races. Sources have suggested Fairmount may ask to move its race dates to Tuesday and Wednesday and maybe even call for its racing season to be separated on the calendar from Hawthorne’s.

“Overlapping race dates between tracks is just not efficient. It’s harmful,” IRB member Patty Saccone said. “It divides our already strained horse population, forces trainers to choose between venues and dilutes the quality of both racing programs. When Illinois competes with itself, we lose all ground. Race dates must not overlap. We need coordination, not competition between tracks, if we’re serious about rebuilding this industry.”

Hawthorne and Fairmount are required to submit their date proposals to the IRB by July 31.

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 by Hawthorne management. President and general manager Tim Carey, whose family owns the track, previously 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.