Malfunction Forces Charles Town to Cancel
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Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races has been forced to cancel its Jan. 9 evening racing program due to a malfunction of the batteries powering the backup lighting system.
The batteries in question are responsible for keeping the lights around the track functional following a power outage and before a generator restores power—a time period of typically less than 30 seconds. The decision was reached by both track management and the Charles Town board of stewards after conferring prior to the start of the first race.
Following a routine daily walkthrough on Friday, it was discovered an issue with the batteries had caused them to lose the ability to supply power enabling the backup lighting to work.
"After we discovered the completely unforeseen issue with the batteries, our vendor indicated they thought they'd be able to create a temporary workaround and we wanted to give them a chance to do so," said Charles Town's vice president of racing Erich Zimny. "But, ultimately, neither us nor the board of stewards had the level of assurance we'd want that the workaround would work with certainty. Regardless of how infrequently power outages occur, for the safety of everyone involved, we weren't as comfortable as we'd need to be to proceed."
Simulcasting will continue at Charles Town on Friday evening. Live racing scheduled to resume Saturday evening, Jan. 10.