Late Van Arrival of Entire 6-Horse Field Causes Fort Erie Stakes Cancellation

With no track available to host races in its home state, a cross-border plan by the Massachusetts Thoroughbred Breeders' Association (MTBA) to fund and run a $35,000 stakes race at Ontario's Fort Erie Racetrack got scuttled Tuesday when the van carrying all six entrants didn't arrive on schedule.

“Basically it was just a series of delays that prevented the horses from getting here on time,” Antonietta Culic, Fort Erie's marketing and media relations director, told TDN.

“They had to arrive by 11:30 a.m. to receive Lasix, and they weren't able to make it here on time. They were all coming up on one van,” Culic said. “If it was just one horse, we would have scratched that one horse and continued on. But unfortunately they were all together, so they weren't able to make it. They were coming from Finger Lakes. It's about an hour and a half from Fort Erie.”
For the past year, the MTBA has been in the unusual situation of having purse money for state-bred stakes races accrue via a Massachusetts statute that mandates casino and gaming funding for Thoroughbred racing even though Suffolk Downs, the last remaining Thoroughbred track in the state, ceased live racing in June 2019.

Finger Lakes hosted some of the MTBA-funded races last autumn and all six entrants for the July 21 $35,000 Rise Jim S. showed recent published workouts there.

But this year the MTBA instead decided to partner with Fort Erie to host the series of races that the MTBA would pay for. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Fort Erie's regular jockeys were named on the Rise Jim mounts, and local grooms and trainers were to have been responsible for the horses while they were at Fort Erie. Only the van driver was to have crossed the border with the horses.

A pre-race notice posted on the MTBA website explained that “It has been very difficult to plan a racing program as the season gets shorter and shorter, and racing venues are difficult to find. Some stateside racing venues have been identified but borders have been closed to both horses and horsemen.”

The notice explained that August races at Fort Erie were in the process of being finalized.

The Rise Jim was race six, and Fort Erie just skipped from race five to race seven on Tuesday.

“The plan is to run it again next week,” Culic said. “Same race, same horses and everything. It's just postponed by one week. I think it depends on once we have our entries on Friday and find out what races we have, then we'll position it in where it fits best with the card, probably on [July 28].”