Arlington International Racecourse

The developer advising Chicago's mayor is proposing a $2.2-billion renovation proposal that includes a glass stadium dome to keep the city's National Football League team, the Bears, at its longtime downtown location, Soldier Field. The website Front Office Sports published details Jan. 8. The news is of peripheral interest to horse racing enthusiasts, because the Bears have otherwise entered into a purchase agreement to instead build a $5-billion stadium on the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse. Although the specifics of the proposal are new, city officials have been...

   Gray horses have been in a GI Kentucky Derby rut the past 15 years. No fewer than 31 consecutive grays (or roans) have gone to post without winning on the first Saturday in May (or September) since Giacomo roared home in front at 50-1 in 2005. That's the longest Derby drought for grays in terms of consecutive starts since 1930, when Churchill Downs began compiling detailed records related to horse colors. There's an asterisk as to whether it's the longest stretch in terms of years. There was a 17-year...

   One month to the date that Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), announced that it intends to sell Arlington International Racecourse near Chicago for "non-horse racing" purposes, the Illinois Racing Board (IRB) Tuesday had its first chance at an open, public meeting to weigh in on that potentially devastating decision. Yet instead of addressing head-on the prospect of Arlington vanishing or proposing ways in which regulators might help to salvage the state's signature Thoroughbred track, the eight IRB commissioners treated the most pressing Illinois racing issue in decades as the proverbial...