After that, standardbred racing won’t return to Chicago until Oct. 19.

by Neil Milbert

If Chicago racegoers miss the Sunday afternoon (Feb. 11) and Monday night programs at Hawthorne Race Course they will have to wait more than eight months before they get another opportunity to see the harness horses in action.

The meeting began on Sept. 9 with Friday, Saturday and Sunday racing through December followed by Sunday and Monday racing in January and February. Three programs were cancelled because of bad weather.

Since 2022, Hawthorne has been the only racetrack in the metropolitan area and the harness horses and thoroughbreds have had a time-share arrangement.

The thoroughbreds will return on March 23 and race 78 programs through Oct. 13.

Then, the standardbreds will be back on Oct. 19 for a 48-program meeting that will extend through Dec. 31 (although the Illinois Racing Board is expected to approve extending the meeting into next year as it did this year).

In deference to the Super Bowl telecast, Sunday’s program will begin at 1 p.m. On Monday, the card that concludes the meeting will get underway at the usual 7:10 p.m.

There will be 11 races with 88 contestants on Sunday and 11 with 85 on Monday. The only race with a double-digit purse is the second on Monday, an $11,100 open trot. On the low end are a pair of $4,000 races on Sunday and another on Monday.

Going into the final two programs, Casey Leonard has reclaimed the title of champion driver that he held for six-straight years before Kyle Wilfong succeeded him in 2022 by gaining top honors at two meetings when the harness and thoroughbred schedules were split into two segments each.

Leonard has 95 winners in 496 outings, while second place Brandon Bates has won 74 of his 358 races. Wilfong, who now uses Hoosier Park as his primary base, is sixth with 43 triumphs to show for 259 starts.

The competition for the leading trainer title is much closer with the 1-2 finishers in the fall of 2022, Amy Husted and Erv Miller, again engaged in a duel.

Defending champion Husted has taken 36 of 185 starts, while Miller has captured 34 of 97.

The current meeting marked the end of the brilliant career of Annas Lucky Star, the 10-year-old trotting mare bred and owned by Danny Graham. In 2023 she was voted the outstanding member of her Illinois-bred age group for the eighth straight year in the voting conducted by the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Association.

She had a 22-race resume consisting of seven wins, three places and five shows for earnings of $57,831 in 2023 and then was out of the mutuel money in two starts in January before her retirement.

She concluded her 155-race career with win, place and show vital statistics of 63-29-16 and a bankroll of $688,694. Her best time was 1:53.1 in 2018 at Springfield.

Graham said he has moved Annas Lucky Star to Shawnee Run Farm in Kentucky and she will begin her broodmare career with a booking with Rebuff, Muscle Hill’s fastest son and a winner of the Breeders Crown trot for 2-year-old colts and geldings.

“Rebuff is from the Cantab Hall line and I kind of wanted to go that way once and see what happens,” said Graham, who resides in Salem, IL. “We’ll try out of state for a couple of years, trying to make her [foals] to be Indiana and Kentucky eligible.

“Then, if it all eventually works out in Illinois, we’ll bring her home.”

To make up for the shrinkage in opportunities that the status quo since 2022 has created, non-betting races at the State Fairgrounds in Springfield and DuQuoin will be held again this summer. Purse money comes from the Hawthorne account and Hawthorne also is covering operating expenses.

This year there will be 28 programs in June, July, August, September and October, an increase from last year when 14 were held at Springfield and two at DuQuoin (where there was one rainout).

In addition, there will be the usual pari-mutuel races at the State Fairs in Springfield and DuQuoin in August.

The October start at Hawthorne is more than a month later than that of the current meeting.

Members of the Illinois harness racing community are hoping that by the time they come back the long-awaited state-of-the-art $400 million casino project at Hawthorne will be nearing completion.

A 2019 Illinois gambling law permitted six new casinos in the state (some of which are already operating at temporary locations) and a new harness track/casino in one of seven south suburban Chicago locations.

The law enabled existing racetracks to add casino gambling with a portion of the gross revenue earmarked for purses, culminating from years of lobbying for approval.

But, then after being in the forefront of the drive for casinos at racetracks, the state’s premier thoroughbred track, the palatial Arlington International Racecourse, did an abrupt about-face and took a pass on a racino. Then, the world-renowned racing showcase was put up for sale by its corporate owner Churchill Downs, Inc. with the stipulation that there would be no racing or casino gambling at the track.

Although the CDI management team has never admitted it, the obvious reason was to eliminate a racing and gambling competitor for nearby Rivers Casino, the state’s most profitable casino, in which it purchased a 62 per cent interest for $407 million in March, 2019.

The Chicago Bears bought Arlington with the intention of putting a new stadium and entertainment complex on the property and tore down the track. But school boards and other local jurisdictions have come out in opposition to giving the NFL team tax break incentives to embark on the project and it is in limbo.

Meanwhile, Hawthorne began demolishing a portion of its grandstand and clubhouse in 2020.

However, reconstruction for the racino has been stalled because of larger than expected costs caused by COVID-19 complications that produced supply chain issues, inflation and high interest rates compounded by restructuring of the Carey-family-owned business — which has about 160 shareholders — to meet Illinois Gaming Board requirements.

Even though the building has been partially demolished racing has continued.

When the racino is up and running, in addition to pumping money into the purse accounts its inception will end the dreaded recapture clause in the Illinois Racing Act that has plagued harness and thoroughbred horse people for nearly 30 years.

Recapture was a by-product of the 1995 law legalizing full-card simulcasting in the state. It allows racetracks to recoup losses on live handle that are a consequence of taking bets on races simulcast from other states. The recapture amount is two per-cent of the decrease of Illinois handle on Illinois races since 1994 and is deducted from purse accounts. Over the years multi-millions of dollars have been deducted.

While Hawthorne is attempting to make a racino a reality a new harness track in the south suburbs remains up in the air.

The Racing Board approved a Dec. 6-29, 2020 meeting at a site in Tinley Park that video gaming operator Rick Heidner and Hawthorne president Tim Carey announced they were partnering to construct only to have Gov. J.B. Pritzger halt plans to sell the state-owned land.

The reason for the governor’s decision was a Chicago Tribune story linking some of Heidner’s business projects to a banking family with organized crime connections. Heidner was later exonerated by the Gaming Board but he chose not to resuscitate the Tinley Park project.

Last March the possibility of a new harness track was back on the horizon when the Greenway Entertainment Group announced it wanted to build on an 80-acre site in Richton Park with the blessings of the village government.

But there was a problem; the proposed site is within 35 miles of Hawthorne and state law prohibits putting a racino inside the 35-mile boundary, giving Hawthorne the right to veto construction.

Members of Hawthorne’s management team said that they never have been contacted by Greenway to discuss the issue and the Illinois legislature hasn’t responded to lobbying to eliminate the statutory roadblock.

Carey has said he plans to push for a second track with a casino but it won’t be until after Hawthorne has completed its casino project.