{"id":32874,"date":"2018-02-05T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/horses-are-back-at-emerald-downs\/"},"modified":"2018-02-05T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T19:30:00","slug":"horses-are-back-at-emerald-downs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/horses-are-back-at-emerald-downs\/","title":{"rendered":"Horses are back at Emerald Downs"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than 200 horses were on the grounds Monday as Thoroughbreds began training for the 2018 live racing season at Emerald Downs.<\/p>\n

Elliott Bay, under Jennifer Whitaker, became the first horse on the track at 8:30 a.m. The track’s champion 2-year-old last year with a pair of stake wins and over $90,000 in earnings, Elliott Bay is trained by Howard Belvoir and owned by Rising Star Stable II.<\/p>\n

Stable superintendent Vern Baze reports 201 horses on the grounds and expects the horse population to swell to nearly 1,000 head by opening day on Sunday, April 22.<\/p>\n

Other trainers on hand Monday included Chris Stenslie, Tom Wenzel, Cliff Balcom, David Martinez, Vince Gibson, Terry Gillihan, Charles Essex, Vince Gibson, Sharon Ross and Doris Harwood.<\/p>\n

The opening of training was streamed on Facebook Live with Emerald Downs President Phil Ziegler and Joe Withee at the controls.<\/p>\n

Elliott Bay is 2-2-0 in five starts including wins in the Gottstein Futurity and WTBOA Lads Stakes, both with Whitaker riding. Barkley, Emerald Downs’ champion 3-year-old of 2016 and fourth in the 2017 Longacres Mile, also was back in his normal stall at Belvoir’s barn<\/p>\n

The 67-day meeting begins with a giveaway of 20 4k TVs on April 22, while the stakes schedule begins Sunday, May 20 with the Seattle Stakes for 3-year-old fillies. The 82nd renewal of the $200,000 Longacres Mile (Grade 3) is Sunday, Aug. 12.<\/p>\n

Training hours are 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily with no renovation break. Beginning Wednesday, Feb. 21, training hours are 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. with renovation from 10:30 to 11. The Quarter Chute Café opens Monday, March 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thoroughbreds open training at Auburn track <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":32875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32874"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}