Delta Downs

Tuesday's immigration raid at Delta Downs--which resulted in the reported apprehension of 84 undocumented individuals--reminds industry stakeholders once again of a frustrating conundrum. On the one hand, they must navigate an environment of ramped-up immigration enforcement, and the potential that what happened at Delta Downs could happen at any other racetrack around the country. On the other, they face a long-broken system that makes sourcing legal immigrant workers a bureaucratic nightmare. "It's insanely difficult," said trainer Doug O'Neill, about a visa system that's necessary to properly staff the racetrack backstretch....

An immigration raid at Delta Downs racetrack Tuesday morning resulted in the apprehension of 84 undocumented individuals, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The surprise morning raid at Delta Downs—currently in the middle of a Quarter Horse meet—involved multiple law enforcement agencies including ICE, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Louisiana State Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the FBI. Those undocumented individuals taken into custody, said ICE, were processed for administrative immigration violations before being taken to the Lake Charles Border Patrol Station in...

Immigration enforcement officers raided the Delta Downs racetrack Tuesday morning in what has been described as a sweep of the backstretch, which had been closed off by the authorities. The raid, involving drones, was coordinated between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), state and local law enforcement agencies, according to several sources. In the latest development in an evolving situation, "several dozen individuals" have been detained at the track as part of the raid, said Eric Hamelback, CEO of the national Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA). Delta Downs' latest Thoroughbred...

Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), which in recent seasons has ended racing at such high-profile tracks as Arlington and Calder over alleged profitability issues, on Tuesday threatened to pull out of Fair Grounds over a recent court ruling that bars it from using a certain type of slot machine, saying the ban would cause it to lose money at the New Orleans track and 13 off-track-betting outlets it owns. Reporting by Anthony McAuley and Tyler Bridges at NOLA.com first broke the news, which emerged out of an "emergency" Louisiana Racing Commission...

Tim Thornton was the leading jockey and veteran conditioner Allen Landry was the top trainer at the Delta Downs meet which concluded Saturday. Thornton has now won five leading rider titles at Delta Downs dating back to the 2018-19 season, when he started a string of four consecutive titles before being unseated by Vicente Del Cid during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons. Del Cid missed the first month of the 2024-25 meet, but quickly rose through the ranks to finish in the standings. Thornton won 85 races from 352 mounts...

Frigid temperatures and snowy conditions continued to cause cancellations this week, with both Parx and Mahoning Valley abandoning live racing Tuesday. It was the second day in a row both tracks were forced to cancel races as they joined Oaklawn Park in abandoning Monday cards. Turfway Park has moved its Wednesday racing card to Sunday with a 12:30 p.m. ET first post due to extreme cold temperatures. The program will not be redrawn and will run in its entirety on Sunday. Racing at the Kentucky track is scheduled to resume...

Tennessee Moon (Ransom the Moon) is not the type of horse to make headlines, but maybe that's because we've forgotten how special and admirable some of these blue-collar horses can be. The 5-year-old owned and trained by 56-year-old Mark Hibdon won 13 times from 18 starts in 2024, winning more races than any other horse in training. It's not just that she was winning, it was where she was winning. She ran in Louisiana (Delta Downs), Nebraska (Fonner Park), Wyoming (Energy Downs 307 Racing), Texas (Lone Star Park), Colorado (Arapahoe...

Norman Stables' Secret Faith (Aurelius Maximus) continued her demolition of the Louisiana-bred stakes ranks with a front-running 7 1/4-length victory in the fillies' division of the Louisiana Futurity at Fair Grounds Sunday. The 2-year-old filly has now won six of her seven starts to date, with five stakes wins at four different tracks. She has a combined winning margin of 40 1/2 lengths, led off by a 14-length score in the D.S. Shine Young Futurity at Evangeline Downs in August. Jayde Gelner purchased Secret Faith on behalf of owner Robbie...

As witnessed at this year's GI Preakness S., partnerships and syndicates are reaching the winner's circle at the highest levels. MyRacehorse scored the victory with Seize the Grey (Arrogate) and over 2,500 people now can claim they were part of a Triple Crown victory. MyRacehorse may be getting all the press, but the reality of the situation is it only provides a small fraction of the horses needed to fill races at the racetracks in the United States. When you zoom out and look at all the managed partnerships and...

It was back in 2006 and Brian Hernandez, Jr. was mired in 12th place in the jockey standings at Churchill Downs with 14 wins. It wasn't that he had been a failure. He won an Eclipse Award in 2004 as the nation's top apprentice, winning 243 races that year. And before moving to the Kentucky circuit in 2006, he was among the top riders at Evangeline Downs and Delta Downs in his native Louisiana. It's just that Hernandez had larger goals and he was starting to worry they would never...

A casino is supposed to be on the way, but in the meantime these are tough times for racing in Chicago and its only remaining racetrack, Hawthorne. They still don't have any outside revenue from a casino, their purses are meager and their simulcast signal gets lost on days like Saturday, when they went up against the likes of Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Keeneland, Oaklawn and Santa Anita. The handle Saturday was $1,019,178. It should have been three times that. We've seen a lot of tracks experiment with lower takeouts. The latest...

Vicente Del Cid finished atop the rider standings, while Karl Broberg retained his grip on the leading trainer crown and End Zone Athletics, Inc. won another leading owner title as results from the 2023-2024 Thoroughbred season at Delta Downs mirrored last year's results at the Louisiana track. The Thoroughbred season concluded Saturday. Del Cid won his second consecutive title as leading rider with 116 wins from 438 mounts and $2,624,265 in mount earnings. The Guatemala native's first career win came at Delta Downs on Oct. 21, 2021, and he finished...