The remodeled and reinvigorated Colonial Downs will open its 15-date meet on Thursday, Aug. 8, and will race on a three-day-a-week schedule through Saturday, Sept. 7. Racing will be on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays with the exception of Labor Day week, when the schedule will be Monday (Labor Day), Friday, and Saturday.
Steeplechase racing, a longtime Virginia tradition, will be a regular feature at Colonial Downs when the New Kent County track presents its inaugural meet under new ownership and management this summer, the National Steeplechase Association and Colonial Downs Group announced.
Initial plans call for two steeplechase traces every Saturday at Colonial Downs. Photo by Betsy Burke Parker.
Post time will be 5 p.m. each day with the exception of Labor Day on Sept. 2, which will have a 1 p.m. first post.
Steeplechase racing will be featured during each racing week. While subject to change, current plans call for two jump races each Saturday of the meet.
“The National Steeplechase Association Board of Directors and I are delighted to be a part of the inaugural meet of the new Colonial Downs,” said NSA President Guy J. Torsilieri. “We have a very large constituency in Virginia, and there’s great enthusiasm in the jump-racing community for returning to a tremendous facility.”
“Colonial Downs welcomes the return of steeplechase racing to the Secretariat Turf Course, a 1 1/8-mile circuit that is—at 180 feet—the widest in North America,” said Jill Byrne, Colonial’s vice president of racing operations. “Jump racing has such a deep history in Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic region, so we are thrilled to host a time-honored tradition as racing returns to the Commonwealth.”