Ellis Park – the Pea Patch, so called because of crops growing on the infield. The track sits not in Henderson, Ky., population 30,000, but across the Ohio River from it. The Indiana border lies about 100 yards from the far turn. The place used to function as a summer placeholder on the Kentucky circuit, with big barns moving from Churchill’s spring meet to Saratoga, leaving Ellis to the lesser locals.
Placeholders no longer exist among Kentucky racetracks. They give away vast sums over the winter at Turfway Park, and the purses this summer at Ellis are staggering.
Ellis’s 25-date season launches Thursday with a nine-race card that drew 98 entrants. Total Thursday purses, including considerable supplements available only to Kentucky-breds, are $646,000. Friday’s program has total purses of $609,000, and money on the weekend is even stronger – $737,000 on Saturday and $779,000 on Sunday. Ellis carded plenty of straight maiden races opening week. Those are worth $100,000.
“We’re using a lot of our high-caliber races here,” racing secretary Baley Hare said. “We’re not afraid to card our big-money races.”
Hare, 32, an 11-year veteran of racing office work with at least two generations of horse people preceding him in the sport, graduated into his first racing secretary job this summer at Ellis after serving as a key assistant at Churchill, Keeneland, and Fair Grounds. He’s walking into a good spot. An increasing number of those major outfits leave horses in Kentucky for the summer. The idea of creating lucrative Kentucky racing opportunities year-round has become reality – Turfway leading into Keeneland, then Churchill in late spring, Ellis giving way to Kentucky Downs, then back to Keeneland and Churchill in the fall.
“A lot of these guys are staying home,” Hare said. “Between the mix of money here and the cost of living in New York, you can understand.”
Ellis has some 700 stalls for horses based at the track, but this is a place where a lot of people ship to run. The opening-day card includes 48 shippers who will pass through the Ellis receiving barn. Hare concedes this can be a major logistical undertaking, but at least Ellis has a functional backstretch. Historic rainfall this past spring sent the Ohio sprawling over its banks, but the levees held, and while flooding came right up to the track itself, Hare said, neither the main track nor the turf course flooded.
The four-day opening week, Thursday through Sunday, is aberrant. Racing weeks the rest of the season, which ends in late August, span Saturday through Monday. Cards start early, at 11:50 a.m. Central.
Field size at Ellis has increased with historical horse racing machine-fueled purses. Ellis’s 8.5 starters per race in 2024 was its highest since 2010. Favorites hit at a 37 percent clip last year, lower than the new normal at many major tracks, but up from 35 percent during the 2023 season and just 30 percent in 2022.
Nearly all the leading riders from the 2024 meet return this season, though several jockeys atop the Churchill spring meet standings have migrated east. One major addition to the Ellis colony: Tyler Gaffalione. An Eclipse finalist in 2024, Gaffalione rides Thursday for the first time since breaking his ankle in late March. His agent, Matt Muzikar, said Gaffalione “will be based at Ellis and be in and out of Saratoga.”
Jockey Declan Cannon returned from an injury layoff this past weekend at Woodbine and will ride at the Ellis meet. Both Cannon and Gaffalione ride for trainer Brendan Walsh, who tied with Steve Asmussen for leading trainer last season.
The track’s 18-race stakes schedule – highlighted by multi-stakes cards on Aug. 2, Aug. 3, and Aug. 10 – offers purses of about $4 million and starts with the Friday program.
Thursday’s feature comes early, race 4, a second-level dirt sprint allowance with a $50,000 claiming option that drew nine entrants, including Cat On Time, who figures the likely favorite and most likely winner. David Jacobson – who, Hare said, will have an increased Ellis presence this summer – trains and owns Cat On Time after privately purchasing the horse late this winter at Fair Grounds. Cat On Time finished an even fifth going 7 1/2 furlongs at this class level June 12 at Churchill, but his in-and-out pattern points to a Thursday rebound, and a cut back in distance to 6 1/2 furlongs should help.
Cat On Time is a Kentucky-bred who runs for a $104,000 purse. Welcome to the new Ellis.
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