Kentucky Downs Preview Day on Aug. 5
-- join us at Ellis Park or for simulcasting --
Four $100,000 stakes leading into our meet
- Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint
- Kentucky Downs Preview Tourist Mile
- Kentucky Downs Preview Ladies Turf
- Kentucky Downs Preview Calumet Farm Turf Cup
Entries taken Thursday, Aug. 2
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Our 2018 live racing dates: Sept. 1, 6, 8, 9 and 13
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Top of the Stretch Chalet debuting at 2018 meet
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Kentucky Downs has added a fourth reserved-seating venue for its Top of the Stretch Chalet, which offers a casual buffet and spectacular viewing while catering to both group sales, smaller parties as well as individuals seeking a reserved seat at America's most unique race meet.
The three established reserved-seat locations -- the Finish Line Pavilion, Turf Club Tent and second-floor Director's Room -- are almost sold out for the 2018 meet's three weekend days. But the Top of the Stretch Chalet, under a substantial open-air tent, offers a buffet, cash bar and mutuel windows dedicated to the area, just like the other venues, with continuous shuttles to the paddock area for our guests. Tickets are $25 a person, including the All-American buffet (hamburgers, hotdogs, desert, etc.) or $20 a person for groups of 10 or more -- making it the most economical choice for reserved seating. Here's what director of racing development Rick Albright says about the location:
"The view might be one of the neatest in racing, because the horses bank off that turn and run literally right at the tent for 35-40 seconds as they come out of the dip. Once they turn for home and run away from you toward the finish line, you’ll be able to enjoy the finish of the race on our HD GoVision jumbotron."
(See more in our Q&A with Rick.)
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Tell us on Twitter, Facebook why you want to visit
-- and you could win a trip to our 2018 race meet
Deadline is Tuesday, July 31 (yes today!)
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Tuesday, July 31 is the last day to enter our #LiveAtKyDowns Post Time Contest. Tell us on Twitter and/or Facebook why you want to win a trip to Kentucky Downs' 2018 race meet. There will be two grand prize winners.
The two grand prize winners will be Kentucky Downs’ guests for live racing Sept. 6, 8 and 9, including hotel accommodations for up to five nights. The regional winner (lives within 200 miles of the track) will receive a betting voucher for $1,000 and up to four tickets in either the Turf Club Tent or Finish Line Pavilion for any or all of the three race days they are able to attend. The national winner (lives outside 200 miles from the track) will be reimbursed for airfare up to $600 for one person or up to $1,000 for two, a $500 betting voucher and two tickets in the Turf Club Tent or Finish Line Pavilion for any or all of the three race days they are able to attend. TVG will give both winners a $250 credit in a TVG wagering account.
Participants must fill out a contest entry blank for each post in order for it to be considered. The winners will be announced Sunday, Aug. 5, at Ellis Park's Kentucky Downs Preview Day.
Complete rules here
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Kentucky Downs Q&A: Rick Albright
Stakes coordinator (and so much more)
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(Rick Albright, right, with Kentucky Downs president Corey Johnsen and Old Friends founder Michael Blowen. Photo by Grace Clark)
No one carries more titles at Kentucky Downs than Rick Albright.
He’s Kentucky Downs’ racing-development manager, stakes coordinator for the track’s lucrative five-date meet, one of two simulcasting managers, point person for Old Friends at Kentucky Downs thoroughbred retirement center and two nights a week is the manager for the Historical Horse Racing gaming operation. He also is involved in marketing, publicity, ticketing and works as a racing official during the live meet.
While growing up 45 miles west of Nashville in Dickson, Tenn., mere happenstance put Albright on this course. He was close to graduating from Austin Peay State University when he was home and saw his younger brother, Scott, heading out of the house. Rick asked where he was going “and he said, ‘They’re opening a new track just across the border,’” Albright said, 28 years later: “I literally thought he was talking about a car-racing track. After he told me it was horse racing, I said, 'Give me 10 minutes and I’ll go with you.’
“It’s all I ever wanted to do since I left that day,” Albright says. “I stumbled onto a sport I find intriguing and made up my mind to make it my career path.”
Horsemen: Rick will be at Ellis Park's Kentucky Downs Preview Day Sunday, Aug. 5, taking stakes nominations for our live race meet.
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Grace Clark elected to Kentucky FFA leadership
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Our Grace Clark -- Franklin-Simpson graduate, sophomore to be at Western Kentucky University and Kentucky Downs' go-to-gal for all kinds of things -- was elected to serve as the
Kentucky FFA Barren River State Vice President.
Grace recently attended the FFA's State Officer Summit in Washington D.C. Photo at right is the
12-person Kentucky team, all college students, at the summit. (Grace is second row, second from left).
We suspect that Grace doesn't sleep, but in between her considerable FFA leadership involvement and being a full-time student, she finds time to serve in many capacities at Kentucky Downs. Those include as a track photographer and working in the racing office, overseeing racing-related social-media content (including creating the #KyDownsGrad campaign) and being involved in many of the publicity and marketing projects.
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Grace recently was awarded a Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP) scholarship. She is the daughter of Shelley Clark of Franklin, Ky., with Shelley Kentucky Downs' indispensable executive assistant.
Grace Clark - our favorite #KyDownsGrad!
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Aug. 5 Kentucky Downs Preview Day at Ellis Park:
Helping to keep horses in the state over the summer
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(Angaston, with jockey Brian Hernandez aboard, worked Monday at Churchill Downs' Trackside training center in preparation for Sunday's $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint. Jennie Rees photo)
When the Kentucky HBPA approved the transfer of purse money from the Kentucky Downs account to Ellis Park, a major consideration was to get the Henderson track's purses up to where more horsemen would stay put in the commonwealth during the summer or at least take fewer horses to New York, Chicago, New Jersey and even Indiana.
This year
$400,000 of the $2.9 million moved from Kentucky Downs to Ellis Park went toward funding a quartet of $100,000 turf stakes at Ellis Park designed to serve as a launching pad to Kentucky Downs' lucrative stakes. Entries will be taken Thursday, but it's safe to say that many of the horses running at Kentucky Downs Preview Day, as Sunday's stakes-laden card is called, would otherwise have made a start out of state.
For instance, trainer Lon Wiggins is running Angaston in the Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint as a stepping stone to Kentucky Downs' $300,000 Franklin-Simpson against fellow 3-year-olds (rather than the $500,000, Grade 3 Kentucky Downs Turf Sprint against older horses). And if Angaston doesn’t run well, he’s got the option of the $100,000 starter-allowance race Kentucky Downs is staging as a prep for the Claiming Crown turf sprint stakes in late fall at Gulfstream Park.
“That’s our main goal,” Wiggins said of the Franklin-Simpson, adding of a prep, “The only other stakes out there is one at Saratoga (the $100,000 Quick Call for 3-year-olds). We didn’t want to ship all that way, and we didn’t know how he’d come back after that. If it wasn’t for this race at Ellis, we would have shipped to Saratoga, no doubt. He probably would have been one of the top three choices in that race. But this is the reason we stayed. We have to run against older horses, but he ran well against Will Call and older horses in his last race,” when second by a head in Churchill Downs allowance race.
Trainer Brendan Walsh plans to run Dubara in the Kentucky Downs Preview Ladies Turf and Extravagant Kid in the Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint. Both will run for $75,000 because they aren’t Kentucky-bred and not eligible for the $25,000 Kentucky-bred supplement that contributes to the $100,000 purse. But to Walsh, it’s still good enough money to run the Florida-bred Extravagant Kid and British-bred Dubara at Ellis.
“Otherwise we’d have had to ship somewhere,” he said. “It’s great they’re doing all this. You don’t have the people going to Saratoga that you had six, seven years ago. People are staying here. The money is better at Ellis, the racing is of a much-higher standard. It’s nice that they have a prep weekend for Kentucky Downs. People don’t have to go here, there and everywhere. You can prep them here.”
Kentucky Downs management will be well-represented at Ellis Park, including giving out some of the stakes trophies. Stakes coordinator Rick Albright will be accepting nominations (which are free) to Kentucky Downs' stakes. Kentucky Downs analyst Caton Bredar will be a guest paddock commentator for the Aug. 3 Ellis card.
Forrest Kaelin Memorial race on Kentucky Downs Preview Day
Forrest Kaelin, the dean of Kentucky trainers and who spent almost 70 years in the sport as a jockey and trainer, passed away July 26 at age 83.
His best horse in recent years was 15-time winner (nine in stakes)
Good Lord
, who resides at
Old Friends at Kentucky Downs
thoroughbred retirement facility. Good Lord won Ellis Park's Don Bernhardt three times from 2012-2014 and also captured the 2012 Kentucky Downs Turf Dash (now known as the Turf Sprint). This year Ellis Park renamed the Bernhardt the Good Lord Stakes. Ellis Park is honoring Kaelin this Sunday, Aug. 3, as part of the Kentucky Downs Preview Day, with the fourth race the Forrest Kaelin Memorial. His friends and colleagues at the track are encouraged to join in the winner's circle photo. In addition, Betty Kaelin, Forrest's wife of 62 years, will present the trophy for the $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint -- designed as a stepping stone to the Kentucky Downs stakes Good Lord won six years ago. Betty was to present the trophy for the July 22 Good Lord but was unable to leave her husband.
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Jackpot on penny machine hit for record $709,983
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Photo: The Kentucky Downs team celebrated a guest hitting a record jackpot. Kentucky Downs photo
A record $709,983 jackpot was paid out July 15 at Kentucky Downs, smashing the previous record of $458,564.
The jackpot was won on a Blue Bolt 7s penny machine — one of 55 unique games offered on Kentucky Downs’ historical horse racing electronic terminals that allow betting on previously-run races while combining the flash of video gaming with the parimutuel technology of live horse racing.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to pay out a record jackpot,” said Amber Norris, Kentucky Downs’ director of marketing. “Life-changing money is being won at Kentucky Downs, and there is no shortage of winning happening as we have consistently been paying out more than $2.5 million monthly in jackpots.”
The jackpot winner did not wish to be identified, but Norris said he is a regular at Kentucky Downs.
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Kentucky Downs has started a new eight-week free handicapping tournament series held on Fridays and concluding Sept. 14, the day after our live race meet ends. Each week's top 15 finishers receive points toward the Sept. 14 series final, with the weekly winner receiving $125. The top 25 points-earners qualify for the championship to compete for $1,500 in prizes.
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Want a print copy of Kentucky Downs' 2018 condition book?
Email Rick Albright at rickalbright@kentuckydowns.com.
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We're supersizing to celebrate 7 years of gaming!
Keep getting entries for our
Super7 promotion
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Reminder that on Saturday, Aug. 25, we commemorate the seventh anniversary of our Historical Horse Racing gaming operation with our biggest single-day giveaway ever with our Super7. Players Club members can earn entries during a given week (Sunday through Saturday), picking up the entries the following Sunday or Wednesday through Aug. 24 for chances to win a 2019 Jeep
® Cherokee Latitude, 2018 Mini Cooper Convertible, 2018 Dodge Ram® Quad Cab 1500 or thousands in cash prizes.
Details
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Follow our #KyDownsGrads
on social media
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Our free monthly newsletter delivered to your inbox:
Sign up by emailing jennierees@kentuckydowns.com
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KENTUCKY DOWNS
kentuckydowns.com/racing
270.586.7778
5629 Nashville Road, Franklin, Ky. 42134
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Kentucky Downs' five-date meet is the most unique in America, offering record purses, the largest fields and low takeout to be ranked the No. 1 betting product by Horseplayers Association of North America. We are open year-round, seven days a week for simulcasting and historical horse racing, which we are proud to use as a means for bettering the entire Kentucky racing circuit.
Newsletter edited by publicity director Jennie Rees.
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