Furzy went out for a four furlong work this morning. She did well and Nevada was so happy with her workout he’s looking to nominate her to the Northbound Pride Oaks.

He’s not really, but he was kidding with me this morning and I figured I’d stick this in the first paragraph and make his heart skip a beat. First things first, let’s get her into a maiden race where she can get her first win and go from there – likely a lower level maiden claimer. Let’s keep our expectations reasonable!

She went just fine in a gallop to keep her in shape and sharp. She came back okay and will continue on her path to her first start for us here at Canterbury.

Remember that you can sign up for workout, entry and race alerts with Equibase, Daily Racing Form and the Horse Races Now app.

If you haven’t heard the news, today Governor Walz indicated to the MRC that Canterbury Park can resume live racing, without fans as long as protocols are in place.

For more detail on that, click here.

That gave us the green light to go ahead and pick up a half interest in two maidens in Nevada Litfin’s barn.  In case you missed earlier posts, we decided to take a half interest in a pair and then have Karl buy/claim one as well because of the short meet.  This way it will give us interest in 3 horses running and, with any luck at all, we should be running on an average of once a week.

The two horses that we have in the barn now are:

Lilfetheredindian (Shanghai Bobby-Star White-Nauvus) is a bay 3-year old filly with 6 starts under her belt and we’ll be aiming to run her at the lower levels.  She should have enough talent to win us a maiden $5000/$10000 claiming and she has a very nice wet track number which, as we know, can be important up here.  She ran credibly at Lone Star but had a rough go at Oaklawn.  She’s healthy and ready to run.

Furzy (Double Irish-Upland-Harlan’s Holiday) is a grey/roan 3-year old filly who has only started twice in Oaklawn maiden special weights.  Neither start was impressive but she was also clearly over her head.  She’s been training really well and seems to be the more talented of the girls.  Fun fact: the two both have Harlan’s Holiday as a grandfather with him being Lil’s sire’s dad and Furzy’s dam sire. Another with a good wet track number and borderline decent turf number.

Both are here in Minnesota and are in training.

I touched base with Karl and we will be unable to claim at Lone Star because of the “jail rule”.  This means a horse claimed at the meet must stay at the racetrack for the remainder of the meet.  These rules are designed to keep stock at a racetrack from getting pillaged to run at another racetrack.  So he will be on the lookout for a decent private purchase or we will look to claim as quickly as we can up here.  Again, given the short time period of the meet, we want to be ready to roll as soon as possible with our third horse.

Below are the lifetime PPs for each filly.  We do anticipate them running much better here with significant class relief and, perhaps, a less competitive meet with the big national stables that flocked to Oaklawn otherwise occupied for the summer.

Furzy Lifetime PPs

Lilfetheredindian Lifetime PPs

As the backside begins to fill and we start moving toward live racing, we have the first interview of the year with one of our trainers, Nevada Litfin.  He’ll talk about what’s coming and what it’s like on the backside with the “new normal”.

We’re hoping to finalize a deal and introduce our two horses shortly.

Canterbury Park’s stable area opened up over the weekend and the first horses have arrived, mostly from Phoenix (Turf Paradise) but soon horses from Hot Springs, AR (Oaklawn) will start to arrive as well.  Though there has not been a definitive date set to start racing, we’re all hopeful that we will get the green light for racing to begin in early to mid-June.

In preparation, we are looking at a bit of a different strategy this year.  Whatever happens with racing, should racing commence it will be different than past years with one of the differences being a shortened meet schedule.  We don’t know the exact numbers of days but it will be less than the traditional 67-69 racing days of past years and could be as few as 50.

Nevada Litfin is looking into the possibility of sharing ownership of two horses with us: 50/50.  This would give us a pair of runners in that barn and Karl will claim something from either Lone Star or Will Rogers (or maybe opening weekend here) which would give us three runners to follow for the season.  This would ensure us more racing opportunities and give us an extra horse to follow for the season – hopefully making up for the some of the lost time.

It is VERY likely that racing will be conducted without fans for much, if not all, of the 2020 season.  That does cut down on some of the activities that we usually are able to bring to you: kick-off and closing breakfasts, paddock and winners’ circle (hopefully) visits and backside tours.  We will look to be a little creative on how we can bring some of that to you throughout the season perhaps doing a virtual backside tour or a “Facebook Live” morning workout session or whatever else we (or you all) can think of.

We hope that we will hear about racing shortly and when we do, we’ll bring that to you as soon as possible, probably first through the twitter feed (@CBY_Racing_Club) and the Facebook page and then with a post.

We appreciate you hanging in there…things are slowly looking up.