Oaklawn Racetrack in Hot Springs Expands Horse Racing Season

The Oaklawn horse runway in Arkansas River is adding December races to its schedule, extending the season to 66 days, the resort announced Monday.

With December races added, the upcoming flavour at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort testament black market from Dec. 3, 2021, to May 8, 2022. This year’s 57-day harden went from Jan. 22 to May 1.

The track and resort hotel are in Hot Springs, nearly an hour SW of Little Rock, the body politic capital. Little Rock is inwards exchange Arkansas.

Oaklawn President Joseph Louis Barrow A. Cella said the recent building of a 198-room hotel at the resort makes the timing redress to spread out the racing season.

For many years, horsemen hold wanted to race hither in Dec to make full a gap inwards their racing schedule,” Cella said.

The holiday resort plans to seek favorable reception at an upcoming Land of Opportunity Racing Commission group meeting for the expanded season.

In the young season, Equus caballus racing will not live held Dec. 24-26 during the holidays. The track also will be unsympathetic on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022. Racing will read localise on Presidents Day, Feb. 21, 2022.

Racing has occurred at the caterpillar track since 1904. It is rest home to the one-year AR Derby, an important run-up to the Triple Crown races. One of the to the highest degree acclaimed Land of Opportunity Derby winners, American Pharoah, won the Triple Crown in 2015

For decades, casinos operated illegally but openly inward Hot Springs, attracting underworld figures such as Chicago’s Al Capone. In the 1960s, authorities for good closed the gaming halls. Oaklawn at present is the only position inward Hot Springs where legal gambling casino gaming occurs.

‘A Great Addition’

Trainer Bokkos Moquett said Oaklawn’s extended flavor allows people inwards the gymnastic horse racing mankind “to participate in the most lucrative purse electrical circuit inwards America without any interruptions.”

“It’s now a smooth modulation between Oaklawn, Churchill, and Saratoga,” he said.

US Racing Marguerite Radclyffe Hall of Fame trainer D. John Wayne Lukas said he has been an counsel of an expanded Oaklawn harden for years.

“I think it’s a great gain and will hold our stables competitive,” he said. “It’s also going to follow a pop time. People are already inward a festive modality around the holidays, and the conditions in Dec is usually pretty good. I believe at that place is going to follow a warm fan base.”

Dog Racing to End at Southland

In addition to Oaklawn, II other commercial-grade casinos are in procedure inwards Arkansas. They are Southland Casino Racing in Occident Memphis and Saracen Casino Resort inward Pine Bluff. A fourth cassino has been licensed for Russellville, but is tied upwards inward a legal dispute.

Dog racing occurs at Southland, though it will live discontinued next year. The resort testament remain fully operational. group A 21-story hotel below construction at the land site is expected to clear next year.

At the stop of 2022, Rebecca West VA is expected to be the only if state with legal domestic dog racing.