Charles Town Classic Purse Back Up to $1M for 2022

Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races has released its 2022 live racing calendar and open stakes schedule for the coming year following approval by the West Virginia Racing Commission at its Feb. 22 meeting.

The calendar calls for 174 days of live racing, including a Wednesday through Saturday schedule in March, April, and May as well as September through December, with racing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the remainder of the year. Post time for all but one day on the Charles Town calendar is 7:00 p.m. ET.

Charles Town's biggest day in 2022 follows up on a format that started in 2020 and has subsequently produced two of the three largest handles in Charles Town's history, as Charles Town presents both of its graded stakes—the $1 million Charles Town Classic (G2) and $500,000 Charles Town Oaks (G3)—on the same Aug. 26 card. The Charles Town Classic and Charles Town Oaks will headline the action on a 13-race program that gets underway with a special first post of 5:00 p.m. 

Run for $1 million in available purse money in its first 11 editions, the Classic will jump back into seven-figure territory for the first time since 2019, with the pandemic impacting available purses in both 2020 and 2021. The Oaks also received a purse increase to $500,000, matching where it stood in 2014, the first year it was run as a graded race. The three other unrestricted stakes on the Classic night undercard—the Russell Road, Misty Bennett Pink Ribbon, and Robert Hilton Memorial—also received hikes to $250,000.

"We're incredibly pleased with the business results of the last two Charles Town Classic programs and look forward to ramping up the card this August," said Charlie McIntosh, Charles Town's director of racing. "The lineup of racing will be very strong and with it projecting as the most lucrative card in our history, we see no reason this shouldn't also be the most anticipated." 

Charles Town's full stakes schedule will be announced at a later date.