Jim Watkins

Thursday's Illinois Racing Board (IRB) meeting, at which 2025 race dates were awarded, yielded almost the exact same headline and summation of how the very same commission meeting unfolded last year: Illinois racing is still struggling to recover from the twin blows of the 2021 closure of Arlington International Racecourse and the inability of the state's two surviving Thoroughbred venues--Hawthorne Race Course and Fairmount Park (AKA FanDuel Sportsbook & Horse Racing)--to follow through with building their proposed racinos that were legalized back in 2019. Yet while last year's IRB annual...

Fairmount Park has been green-lighted to resume spectator-free racing next week, coinciding with the "Phase 3" stage of the pandemic re-opening plan in Illinois. The St. Louis Post Dispatch first broke the story late Wednesday morning. Jim Watkins, the president of the Illinois Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, told the Post-Dispatch he is not sure of an exact return date, but the plan is to have seven races twice a week. Fairmount, which is 12 miles east of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, traditionally races on Tuesday afternoons and Saturday nights...