LEXINGTON, Ky. _ On television, Wednesday looked like most any other opening day of a race meet at Keeneland.
It was anything but that, of course. Wednesday was the start of a five-day Summer Meet, pieced together between the Spring Meet, canceled by the coronavirus pandemic, and the upcoming September sales, October Fall Meet, a little thing called the Breeders' Cup and the November sales.
Plus, there were no fans at Keeneland on Wednesday. Limits on owners. No media. Such were the guidelines laid down by the track coming into the five-day affair, which lasts through Sunday and includes a stakes-filled Saturday highlighted by the running of the Grade 2 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes.
So Wednesday looked, well, weird. After all, television can't do justice to the Keeneland Race Course. You have to be there to see the beauty, the people, the clothes, the food, the paddock and, of course, the horses.
"I have to say I miss the fans," trainer Ian Wilkes told TVG before his Savvy won the fifth race. "I miss the owners."
"It's very different, especially in July," trainer Victoria Oliver told the network. "I'm glad they were able to do it, and get all these stakes in over the weekend. It's different and it's fun."
And it's racing, something Keeneland wanted to do after canceling its Spring Meet. Other tracks have been able to conduct racing without fans, including Churchill Downs, Oaklawn Park, Santa Anita, Gulfstream, etc. With that in mind, Keeneland was able to work out an arrangement with Ellis Park to take these five dates in July.
"What we were looking at was being part of a program that fit within the Kentucky racing circuit, but also the fit within a national stakes program," Bob Elliston, Keeneland's vice president for racing and sales, said Tuesday.
That's tricky business. After all, the Kentucky Derby has been pushed back to Sept. 5. The Belmont was run in New York on June 20 as a Derby prep. So Saturday's Blue Grass stakes is before the Haskell Invitational, usually post-Triple Crown, now July 18 at Monmouth. The Travers, normally the last big 3-year-old race before the Breeders' Cup, will be run Aug. 3, a month ahead of the Kentucky Derby.
The second goal, said Elliston, is to "create a foundation that we could build on." He explained the track hopes to show racing and health officials it can race safely and effectively.
"So that's what we're trying to do," Elliston said, "create a foundation we can build on that creates confidence for everybody who's participating."
Fans or no fans, the bettors are happy to have the races, while the horsemen are happy to have a place to run their horses in those races.
"It is extremely challenging," said trainer Bret Calhoun when asked Tuesday how difficult it has been to keep horses fit and healthy while waiting for races. "You don't want to overdo it and not have any places to race, but you want to be ready when they come up, when they come available. But this is a new world we live in and we've kind of got to take a deep breath and use a little patience."
On the track, everything appeared to go smoothly Wednesday. Jockeys could be seen wearing masks in the paddock and post parades. Television interviews were conducted with social distancing. The highlight of the day came in the sixth race when Greyes Creek charged down the middle of the turf course to beat My America at the wire in a $77,000 allowance race for trainer Chad Brown. The only thing missing was the roar of the crowd during the thrilling stretch run.
"We wanted to do what we could to get them here," Elliston said of the reduced number of owners allowed at the track. "Hopefully, when we return back here in October, we can do more than that with our spectators."
That's the hope, anyway. Right now, we should be happy with what we can get.
