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West Virginia’s largest single-day thoroughbred racing event, the Charles Town Classic, may be canceled this year after the state Racing Commission on Tuesday rejected the track’s annual request to fund $1.2 million in race purses.
“This is the premier event of West Virginia horse racing, and to cancel it is just so misguided,” Erich Zimny, vice president for racing operations at Charles Town Races, said after the request was rejected.
“They essentially voted to kill the largest horse racing event in West Virginia,” Zimny said.
After the vote, Gov. Jim Justice issued a statement Tuesday afternoon saying he supports the Classic, and has asked his staff to look into ways to reverse the commission’s decision.
This year’s race was scheduled for April 22, and the Hollywood Casino and Charles Town Races website already referred to the event as the “$1.25 million Charles Town Classic.”
The two Justice appointees to the three-member commission, Ken Lowe Jr. and Anthony Figaretti, voted to reject the $1.2 million purse fund request. Jack Rossi, the commission’s chairman, did not vote after the other two voted against the proposal.
Last month, the commission postponed a vote on the request, after Lowe called the $1.2 million purse “excessive,” and proposed a $300,000 cap — an amount Zimny said would be insufficient to attract owners of top national thoroughbreds to enter the races.
In a statement Tuesday, Justice said, “I don’t dictate what my appointees do, but I am in support of the one big race, the Charles Town Classic. I have asked my staff to look into ways to have this decision reversed.”
The Classic has been run each spring since 2009, with $1.2 million purses for the past two years, and $1.5 million purses for each of the three years prior.
Zimny said the 2017 Classic was broadcast live on Fox Sports 2, and he expected that the national cable sports channel would also broadcast the 2018 event.
During the 2016 gubernatorial campaign, Justice talked about bringing major, Breeders’ Cup-level horse races to Charles Town as part of his plan to greatly expand state tourism and create 16,000 new tourism industry jobs statewide.
Shortly after taking office in January 2017, Justice appointed Lowe and Figaretti to the Racing Commission. They replaced commissioners Greg McDermont and Bill Phillips, even though their terms were not set to expire until 2020.
Lowe is a Shepherdstown real estate and business developer who owns thoroughbreds. According to Bloodhorse.com, a horse racing website, Lowe was ejected from the Charles Town racetrack premises in 2011 for distributing Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association pamphlets in violation of track rules.
Figaretti, who owns a Wheeling company that produces spaghetti sauce, apparently had no background in thoroughbred or greyhound racing prior to his appointment to the commission.
Zimny said as far as he knows, the commission has never before rejected a purse fund request that was endorsed both by track management and the local horsemen’s association.
As for whether the race might go on, Zimny said, “I’m sure we’ll talk internally about our options, but nothing has been set in stone yet.”
Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1220 or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.
