Keeneland opening weekend marks return of thoroughbred racing to Lexington
LEXINGTON, Ky. (FOX 56) — Kentucky basketball fans are always hopeful that the first weekend in April consists of cheering on their Wildcats in the Final Four, which they will not be doing this weekend after getting bounced last Friday in the Sweet 16.
Tennessee is heading back to the Elite Eight as defense clamps down in 78-65 win over Kentucky
Here in Lexington, it's time to turn our attention to the beautiful sport of Thoroughbred Racing. Keeneland week is here, with the 2025 Spring Meet beginning on Friday.
Opening weekend is always a great time at the track, but oftentimes comes with some spotty weather and it looks to be the same on this weekend's forecast with a lot of rain headed our way, but will be a fun time regardless.
Keeneland generates big numbers for Lexington metro area economy
The track is quiet early in the week with final preparations underway, as they get ready to see anywhere north of 20,000-30,000 horse racing fans on Friday and normally an even higher attendance on Saturday.
The featured race of Friday's opening day is the $750,000 Central Bank Ashland (G1). It is the 88th running of the historic race on the main track for three year old fillies, with the winner guaranteed a spot to run in the Kentucky Oaks (G1) on the first Friday in May at Churchill Downs.
Woodford Reserve unveils 2025 Kentucky Derby commemorative bottle
A change made a few years ago, the Ashland Stakes now gets its own day on Friday. Then on Saturday, the colts take centerstage with the 101st running of the $1.25 million Toyota Blue Grass (G1), with that winner granted the opportunity to run in the Kentucky Derby (G1) four weeks from then under the Twin Spires.
Here is the field for the Central Bank Ashland, with a post time of 5:16 p.m. as Race 9 of Friday's 10 race card:
Post
Horse
Trainer
Jockey
1
Look Forward
Michael McCarthy
Mario Gutierrez
2
La Cara
Mark Casse
Dylan Davis
3
Supa Speed
John Sadler
Joel Rosario
4
Muhimma
Brad Cox
Flavien Prat
5
Running Away
Wesley Ward
Gerardo Corrales
6
Take Charge Milady
Kenny McPeek
Brian Hernandez Jr.
7
Amarth
Eddie Kenneally
Luis Saez
8
Admit
Tom Drury
Jose Ortiz
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Big offense and big hearts fuel Murray State Racers as their improbable CWS run is about to begin
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Like Fresno State, Stony Brook and Oral Roberts before them, the Murray State Racers are about to be embraced as the College World Series' lovable underdogs by local fans looking to adopt a team for the week. Murray State merchandise already is selling fast among folks who are much more likely to identify the southwestern Kentucky school with basketball alums Ja Morant or Popeye Jones than the upstart ballclub making its CWS debut. As a No. 4 regional seed, the Racers (44-15) beat No. 10 national seed Mississippi of the SEC two out of three times on its home field and also took down the ACC's Georgia Tech. Then they won two of three at Duke in the super regionals. Up next is their CWS opener against No. 15 UCLA (47-16) on Saturday. 'A lot of people are cheering for us, but how many people actually believe in us that we can get it done?' said Dustin Mercer, the team's leading hitter. There's plenty of belief in the clubhouse. Coach Dan Skirka and his players say their bond is unique for a team made up of eight transfers from four-year schools, 14 from junior colleges and 14 others players who started their careers with the Racers. The way they see it, their small-budget program has things money can't buy — players' trust in each other, love for each other and grittiness. 'We don't have all the bells and whistles,' Skirka said. No, they don't. Murray State doled out $858,107 on baseball in the 2024 fiscal year. That's about one-tenth of the $9 million baseball budgets for the SEC's Arkansas and LSU, the biggest spenders in the CWS. The Racers were just under the 11.7 scholarship limit for this season. Skirka's most recent salary was listed at $91,000 on the state of Kentucky's transparency website, about 10 times less than the man who will be in the opposite dugout Saturday, UCLA's John Savage. The Racers ranked in the bottom half of Division I home attendance this season, averaging 375 fans per game at 800-seat Johnny Reagan Field. Contrary to several published reports, Skirka said he does not mow the grass, though his players do shovel snow off the field if necessary before early season practices and games. The 40-year-old Skirka is straight out of central casting as the Racers' seventh-year head coach. He grew up in Coldwater, Michigan, population 14,000, and played college ball about 90 minutes away at Division II Grand Valley State. Before he took over at Murray State, where he had been an assistant from 2009-14, he had been an assistant and head coach at junior colleges and an assistant at Division II Ouachita Baptist in Arkansas. 'Humble beginnings,' Skirka said. Skirka's mantra is to squeeze everything he can out of his limited resources and then add a personal touch. Skirka said it's about recruiting the right people more than the right players. A lot of his team's success is the result of what has happened off the field. There were the team dinners at Skirka's house, bowling outings, creative conditioning drills and presentations players give in the fall about their lives outside baseball. 'The culture, I know it's cliché, but that's the number one thing on my mind 24/7,' Skirka said. 'That's what these guys want. That's what I promised them in the recruiting process.' The Racers swept the Missouri Valley regular-season and tournament championships and have kept rolling. They're batting .357 and averaging 10.8 runs per game since the start of regionals. Mercer, in his third season with the Racers since transferring from Virginia Tech, is batting .360 for the season and .552 with seven doubles in the NCAA Tournament. Leadoff man Jonathan Hogart, who played at a junior college and Louisiana Tech before arriving at Murray State last year, has hit four of his team-best 22 homers in the postseason. Graham Kelham, who transferred from Division III Saint Francis after last season, has recorded saves in four of the Racers' five tournament wins. 'I think it's cool what they've done,' said Oregon State pitcher Dax Whitney, who watched the Racers' 5-4 win over Duke on Monday. 'They obviously earned the opportunity to be here. I don't think anybody should overlook them.' Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999, Murray State is just the fourth No. 4 regional seed to make it to Omaha. Fresno State came out of the loser's bracket to win six games on its way to the 2008 national championship. Stony Brook went 0-2 with a pair of lopsided losses in 2012. Oral Roberts went 1-2 in 2023. Win or lose Saturday, the Racers will face either No. 3 national seed Arkansas or No. 6 LSU in their second game. The Racers say they're up for anything at this point. Skirka said he's been running on adrenaline and Red Bull since regionals. 'Since we've landed it's been go, go, go,' he said. 'You see the smile and look of just pure joy on these guys' faces. It's pure. They're having the time of their lives.' So is Skirka. 'Thanks to this group of Racers, they helped me get here,' he said. 'And it's been awesome, and we're looking forward to a little bit of a lengthy stay here.' ___ AP college sports:
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Big offense and big hearts fuel Murray State Racers as their improbable CWS run is about to begin
OMAHA, Neb. — Like Fresno State, Stony Brook and Oral Roberts before them, the Murray State Racers are about to be embraced as the College World Series' lovable underdogs by local fans looking to adopt a team for the week. Murray State merchandise already is selling fast among folks who are much more likely to identify the southwestern Kentucky school with basketball alums Ja Morant or Popeye Jones than the upstart ballclub making its CWS debut. As a No. 4 regional seed, the Racers (44-15) beat No. 10 national seed Mississippi of the SEC two out of three times on its home field and also took down the ACC's Georgia Tech. Then they won two of three at Duke in the super regionals. Up next is their CWS opener against No. 15 UCLA (47-16) on Saturday. 'A lot of people are cheering for us, but how many people actually believe in us that we can get it done?' said Dustin Mercer, the team's leading hitter. There's plenty of belief in the clubhouse. Coach Dan Skirka and his players say their bond is unique for a team made up of eight transfers from four-year schools, 14 from junior colleges and 14 others players who started their careers with the Racers. The way they see it, their small-budget program has things money can't buy — players' trust in each other, love for each other and grittiness. 'We don't have all the bells and whistles,' Skirka said. No, they don't. Murray State doled out $858,107 on baseball in the 2024 fiscal year. That's about one-tenth of the $9 million baseball budgets for the SEC's Arkansas and LSU, the biggest spenders in the CWS. The Racers were just under the 11.7 scholarship limit for this season. Skirka's most recent salary was listed at $91,000 on the state of Kentucky's transparency website , about 10 times less than the man who will be in the opposite dugout Saturday, UCLA's John Savage. The Racers ranked in the bottom half of Division I home attendance this season, averaging 375 fans per game at 800-seat Johnny Reagan Field. Contrary to several published reports, Skirka said he does not mow the grass, though his players do shovel snow off the field if necessary before early season practices and games. The 40-year-old Skirka is straight out of central casting as the Racers' seventh-year head coach. He grew up in Coldwater, Michigan, population 14,000, and played college ball about 90 minutes away at Division II Grand Valley State. Before he took over at Murray State, where he had been an assistant from 2009-14, he had been an assistant and head coach at junior colleges and an assistant at Division II Ouachita Baptist in Arkansas. 'Humble beginnings,' Skirka said. Skirka's mantra is to squeeze everything he can out of his limited resources and then add a personal touch. Skirka said it's about recruiting the right people more than the right players. A lot of his team's success is the result of what has happened off the field. There were the team dinners at Skirka's house, bowling outings, creative conditioning drills and presentations players give in the fall about their lives outside baseball. 'The culture, I know it's cliché, but that's the number one thing on my mind 24/7,' Skirka said. 'That's what these guys want. That's what I promised them in the recruiting process.' The Racers swept the Missouri Valley regular-season and tournament championships and have kept rolling. They're batting .357 and averaging 10.8 runs per game since the start of regionals. Mercer, in his third season with the Racers since transferring from Virginia Tech, is batting .360 for the season and .552 with seven doubles in the NCAA Tournament. Leadoff man Jonathan Hogart, who played at a junior college and Louisiana Tech before arriving at Murray State last year, has hit four of his team-best 22 homers in the postseason. Graham Kelham, who transferred from Division III Saint Francis after last season, has recorded saves in four of the Racers' five tournament wins. 'I think it's cool what they've done,' said Oregon State pitcher Dax Whitney, who watched the Racers' 5-4 win over Duke on Monday. 'They obviously earned the opportunity to be here. I don't think anybody should overlook them.' Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999, Murray State is just the fourth No. 4 regional seed to make it to Omaha. Fresno State came out of the loser's bracket to win six games on its way to the 2008 national championship. Stony Brook went 0-2 with a pair of lopsided losses in 2012. Oral Roberts went 1-2 in 2023. Win or lose Saturday, the Racers will face either No. 3 national seed Arkansas or No. 6 LSU in their second game. The Racers say they're up for anything at this point. Skirka said he's been running on adrenaline and Red Bull since regionals. 'Since we've landed it's been go, go, go,' he said. 'You see the smile and look of just pure joy on these guys' faces. It's pure. They're having the time of their lives.' So is Skirka. 'Thanks to this group of Racers, they helped me get here,' he said. 'And it's been awesome, and we're looking forward to a little bit of a lengthy stay here.' ___ AP college sports:
Indianapolis Star
3 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
'It seems like it was just yesterday.' Lost Gyms series to explore former high school gyms
This is an introduction to IndyStar's "Lost Gyms" project. A few years ago, we visited Indiana's great high school basketball cathedrals, some of the nation's largest gyms. This summer, we'll take you to some gyms lost to time, where Hoosier Hysteria has long since moved on, but is not forgotten. We were sitting in the Cabby O'Neill Gym in Jasper on a bright spring afternoon recently as the sunlight shined through the windows and glistened on the hardwood floor. Across from us was the man who spent months glazing the windows in 2009 and '10 as part of the effort to save the gym where we were sitting. For 16 months, hardly a day passed by when Rick Begle did not spend time working on the Cabby O'Neill Gym. He poured hundreds of hours into the gym where he sat on Santa Claus' lap as a 5-year-old, watched Jasper basketball games as an elementary-age kid, then played for the Wildcats in the 1970s, scoring the last basket in the gym before a new gym was built on the outskirts of town. All of that work proved more fruitful than Begle even realized when the roof of the Jasper gym collapsed after heavy rains in 2011. For two years, Jasper played its home games at the Cabby O'Neill Gym. Rick's son, Caleb, scored the first basket in a high school game at the gym since his dad made the last one 33 years earlier. 'That was kind of precious for me,' Rick said. When Jasper's new gym was finished and the high school games moved back, the Cabby O'Neill retreated from the limelight again. But it remains a busy place. There are dance and cheerleading practices, middle school basketball games, wrestling meets and more. 'There is definitely some gratification,' said Begle, 'that we did the right thing.' These buildings are just that to some … buildings. They do not see what Rick Begle sees when he sits inside the Cabby O'Neill gym, 60 years after he first sat there behind the goal and thought, 'What do I have to be able to do get out there and play in this environment?' It does not feel like 60 years, of course. Time is a thief. Several years ago — going on 16 or 17 now — I traveled around the state to visit places like the Cabby O'Neill gym for a project for IndyStar. These former high school gyms in towns that no longer had schools, or maybe just elementary schools. Some of the gyms had new lives as community centers or businesses. One was part of a fire station. One was a church. Another a library. A few were part of people's homes. Some were barely hanging on. I don't remember how many I visited. Too many. The project for IndyStar turned into a book called Historic Hoosier Gyms: Discovering Bygone Basketball Landmarks published by The History Press. I condensed it down to 100 gyms for the book, which published in 2010. My goal at the time — certainly arguable whether it was achieved it not — was to document these places, and their stories, before they were gone. But the fun part for me was not necessarily visiting the gyms themselves; it was hearing from the people who loved them. I remember vividly talking to 80-year-old George Sutton, who had lived next door to the Arlington school and gym in Rush County for 36 years. The school, built in 1909, and the gym, built in 1939, would soon be torn down. As we stood outside the gym on a snowy January night, Sutton eloquently stated his thoughts on the future of the gym. 'Yesterday's gone,' Sutton said. 'It has value, but only in the minds of those of us who remember it. It's like a pumpkin at the end of the vine.' Sutton died in 2015 at age 86. So, too, have many of the people I talked to for the book. Bud Tutterrow told me he would cry his eyeballs out and buy the gym himself if they ever thought of tearing down the gym in tiny Economy. Bud died in 2010. A few miles away, Jon Detwiler amazed me with how much work he put into the Williamsburg gym in Wayne County. I talked to him two months before he passed away in April of 2009. The community renamed the gym for Detwiler that summer. Every time a Tutterrow or Detwiler passes away, a little bit of basketball history is lost. We become further removed from the era when these unique gyms popped up — mostly from the 1920s through the 1950s — and before the School Corporation Reorganization Act of 1959 drastically cut down on the number of schools in the state over the next decade. Those gyms, once the center of activity in the community, went quiet. Consolidations and antiseptic, multipurpose gyms followed. And little by little, every year, there are fewer of the old gyms still standing. In January of 2023, I visited the old Pine Village gym for a going away party for the 1940 gym that was soon to be demolished. Walking through the door that morning at the former home of the Pine Village Pine Knots was something I will never forget. The outpouring of love for the gym was clear from those who wore letter jackets and shared stories of a school that was consolidated in 1973. 'I bet if I chained myself to the building, he would chain himself to the building, too,' said 1963 graduate Mary Gamble, wearing her school sweater, to '64 graduate Marv Blessing. But there are old gyms still out there, hiding in plain sight. Over the past few months, we visited several of them for our 'Lost Gyms' series. We sat down inside these gyms and listened to those who played in them, coached in them and cheered in them to understand what made these gyms so special, and so personal. Some laughed. Some cried. Some laughed and cried. And over the next few weeks, starting Monday, we will share their stories. 'When you are 17 or 18 years old, you don't think of the gym you're in,' one 80-year-old man told us as he sat in the gym where he played. 'You just take it for granted. That's just where you play. What's kind of sad is that it seems like it was just yesterday.' Yesterday might be gone. But it's not forgotten.
