After 12 horses died in a little more than a month, including two during Kentucky Derby week, officials at Churchill Downs, which is in Louisville, Kentucky, announced racing operations have been suspended. The spring meet will move 130 miles west to Ellis Park.
The move will allow Churchill Downs to conduct a thorough inspection of safety and surface protocols. A news release from the home of the most iconic race in the sport said previous reviews of the track had not identified a cause for the fatalities. They said the decision was made out of an “abundance of caution.”
“What has happened at our track is deeply upsetting and absolutely unacceptable,” Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen said in Friday’s release. “We need to take more time to conduct a top-to-bottom review of all of the details and circumstances so that we can further strengthen our surface, safety and integrity protocols.”
Ellis Park, which is also owned by Churchill Downs Inc., will resume racing on June 10. The meet is scheduled to end on July 3. Ellis Park’s summer meet usually runs from July 7 to August 27, but will now merge with the Churchill Downs meet.
The canceling of the spring meet at Churchill Downs means several big races such as the Belmont Stakes, Downs after Dark and twilight racing will not occur.
Several hundred track employees will be out of a job because of the closure. Pari mutuel tellers, maintenance workers, and valets, who work at the track during meets, are now unemployed a month earlier than expected.
Service Employees International Union Office Manager George Skellie told WAVE News that the closure came as a shock to union members.
“We didn’t really expect that it would be the remainder of the meet,” Skellie said. “We thought it would be, ‘Let’s close down this and take a look at it,’ but it is what it is.”
Meanwhile, Dennis Moore, Churchill Downs track superintendent, has conducted an analysis on two separate occasions on the race track and has so far not found a common thread that would link the 12 deaths.
The track has implemented other measures to hopefully curtail horse deaths. It granted the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) oversight of track safety. It also immediately limited horses to four starts during a rolling eight-week period and imposed ineligibility standards for poor performers.
