Page 92 - Speedhorse June 2020

The group that owns Ruidoso Downs recognized the monetary challenges posed by the pandemic restrictions, but they forged ahead because they recognize the importance of giving horsemen a place to run their horses.
Temperature screenings are required daily for anyone entering the stable area, with wristbands issued each day to indicate a person has passed the screening. No one with a temperature of more than 100.4 is permitted to enter, and
if one person in a vehicle has an elevated temperature, no one in the vehicle can come into the barn area.
“Between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. we’re probably seeing 300 people a day,” said True. “It’s a bit
of a tedious chore, but that’s what it takes to convince the governor and the department of health that we’re doing what we need to do to keep the community safe.”
Other safety protocols include installing Plexiglass in front of the entry booth and limiting the number of people allowed in the racing office at any one time. People on the backstretch wear facemasks and gloves, and they are practicing social distancing.
The only delay that occurred was that Ruidoso opened its stable area on May 1-10 days later than originally planned. True praised the horsemen for having their horses ready, especially for the two days of trials for the Ruidoso Futurity on May 22-23.
True noted that Ruidoso was able to keep all of its 110 year-round employees, not having to lay off any of them. Work duties in some
cases changed to reflect the racetrack’s current requirements, and Ruidoso was initially unable to hire many of the seasonal people it employs.
As the summer progresses, True is hopeful that owners and fans can return and the track can hire the seasonal employees.
Before the actual racing began, Ruidoso expanded its jockey room considerably to allow the jockeys to properly social distance. Each jockey underwent a physical and COVID-19 testing before being allowed to ride.
“One of the issues that we have here is that Remington Park and Ruidoso Downs overlap their race meets in May,” True said. “There was the issue of riders at Remington Park coming to Ruidoso Downs to ride in schooling races and trials and then going back to Remington.”
Ruidoso shared its safety protocol plans with Remington, and the two tracks were able to work out a system for the jockeys to ride at both tracks safely.
As Ruidoso was developing its safety protocols, management was also making contingency plans in case the race meeting
had not been allowed to open Memorial
Day weekend. Particularly difficult was the scheduling of the track’s signature Triple Crown races—the Ruidoso Futurity, Rainbow Futurity, and All American Futurity.
“We need a certain number of weeks between the finals of one race and the trials of the next one,” said True. “We need to get horses in here at least three weeks before our first racing day. We’ve got to have schooling races. All of these things are interconnected.”
Ruidoso probably had about one week of wiggle room. True said that if they had been delayed until May 29, the three futurities could have still gone on without too much difficulty.
“We figured if we didn’t get open May 22 or May 29, then we’d have to cancel the Ruidoso Futurity,” he said. “We had to consider whether we could have run the race somewhere else.”
Fortunately, none of that occurred, and the Ruidoso Futurity trials took place as scheduled.
One minor wrinkle on the horizon is completely out of the control of Ruidoso and, in fact, the entire Quarter Horse racing industry. The Thoroughbred world’s biggest U.S. race, the Kentucky Derby, has been rescheduled from the first Saturday in May to the first Saturday in September because of the pandemic.
That puts the Kentucky Derby on Sept. 5, the first day of All American weekend over the Labor Day holiday. Ruidoso has scheduled the All American Gold Cup that day, followed by the All American Derby Sept. 6 and the All- American Futurity Sept. 7.
90 SPEEDHORSE June 2020