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Arlington Won't Seek 2022 Racing Dates, Horsemen Irate

Owner Churchill Downs Inc. continues to take steps toward closing Arlington.

Arlington International Racecourse

Arlington International Racecourse

Coady Photography

With the deadline looming for 2022 racing dates applications, it appears Arlington International Racecourse and its owner, Churchill Downs Inc., are serious about this year's marketing slogan: "The Final Turn."

Arlington president Tony Petrillo confirmed July 29 his earlier statement that the track is not preparing an application to race next year amid CDI's ongoing efforts to sell the property for redevelopment.

"No applications being prepared," Petrillo texted.

The Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association angrily charged that decision will preclude any would-be purchaser, including one headed by former Arlington president Roy Howard and backed by the ITHA, from conducting racing in 2022.

The Illinois Racing Act provides: "All applications for the issuance of an organization license shall be filed with the Board before August 1 ..." With Aug. 1 falling on a Sunday this year, the IRB confirmed it is treating Friday, July 30 as the deadline.

ITHA president Mike Campbell repeated the long-standing allegation that CDI is acting to prevent competition with Rivers Casino, in which it owns a majority interest. Rivers is located about 15 miles from Arlington and is Illinois' most successful casino.

"It is clear that Churchill Downs cares exclusively about corporate profit and that all other considerations are incidental," Campbell said in a statement. "All we can do in this case is hope that Churchill will recognize the utility, for the sake of its interest in selling Arlington Park to the most capable bidder, of filing the dates application to preserve the possibility of future racing at the track.

Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen on an investor call earlier July 29 said the company has "numerous bids from interested parties for the land" on which Arlington is located and will provide an update "when we have selected the winning bidder."

CDI officials said cash from the sale of the Arlington site and excess land around the former Calder Race Course in Florida could be used to reinvest in CDI, pursue other acquisitions, or as a return to shareholders. A day earlier, CDI announced three year's of major expansions at its namesake track and offsite Louisville historical horse racing facility. The company also is investing heavily in its Northern Kentucky track and associated HHR facility, Turfway Park.

While the dates application deadline seems definitive, Illinois political history is replete with examples of creative interpretations of legal language that make the seemingly impossible, possible. In the recent past, various crises have seen the Racing Board adopt tentative schedules, sometimes with alternate provisions that would be finalized even after the September deadline for actually awarding dates.

Meanwhile, Hawthorne Race Course, the only other remaining track in the Chicago area, reportedly has drafted plans to seek Thoroughbred racing dates during the summer of 2022 should Arlington go dark.

That, presumably, would push harness racing at Hawthorne to the early and late months of the year since plans for a standalone Standardbred "racino" in Chicago's south suburbs have stalled. That schedule would leave a yawning gap in the Thoroughbred season at a time when tracks in competing states, notably Oaklawn Park in Arkansas, are expanding their seasons with much better funded purse accounts.