Churchill Preparing for Racing's Return in September

In examining the rash of breakdowns that marred the Churchill Downs spring-summer meet and saw the decision to move the final weeks of that meet to Ellis Park, track officials have found no silver bullet in terms of cause but they are working to improve every aspect of the safety protocols in place to prepare for racing's return to Churchill Downs Sept. 14.

On June 10 the spring-summer meet was moved from Churchill to Churchill Downs Inc. sister track Ellis, a move that executives on a CDI conference call with investors and analysts July 27 said resulted in about a $6 million negative impact, including a one-time $4 million expense to racing operations as well as about a $2 million negative impact to its advance-deposit wagering platform, TwinSpires.com, when some bettors did not shift their dollars from Churchill to Ellis.

Bill Carstanjen, CDI's CEO, said that while the Churchill racing surfaces were found to be safe, it was worth shutting down a few weeks to review all of the track safety protocols in place. He said Churchill will soon announce the safety procedures planned for its short September meeting.

"What we needed to do was spend some of this time in the interim while we ran the rest of the race meet at Ellis to just go soup-to-nuts through every single thing we do at the racetrack," Carstanjen said. "There was nothing that jumped out as an apparent cause of the injuries or the breakdowns. We went through and rebuilt our processes from the ground up to check everything that we do to make extra sure we didn't find anything material. 

"You have to do the best you can to take the steps that you can to make it as safe as possible and you constantly have to challenge yourself and review everything you do. But this was a series of unfortunate circumstances that happened during the early portion of our meeting. To the extent that there can be good that comes out of it, everything we'll do going forward, starting in September, we'll do a little bit better and be a little bit more thorough and we'll learn what we can."

The adjustments in place will not involve any significant changes to the racing surfaces.

"There aren't any material changes that have been made to the structure or the surface of the track," Carstanjen said. "We didn't find anything fundamentally wrong or different about our track from previous years. We just have to commit to continually doing everything we can. We'll make constant incremental improvements to be as safe as we possibly can be. And we've done that."