Alberta’s Century Mile and Manitoba’s Assiniboia Downs will start their 2021 meetings on the Victoria Day long weekend, delayed slightly due to COVID-19 protocols.
Century Mile in Nisku has a packed 10-race card on May 21 with a post time of 8:00 p.m. eastern (6:00 p.m. MDT).
Stakes winners STONE CARVER and DEUCES ARE WILD headline race 1, one of several allowance races on the card. Stone Carver won the 2020 Journal Handicap and then was second in the Spangled Jimmy to Deuces Are Wild. Both Kentucky-breds have been working quickly for their return races.
Assiniboia Downs opens May 24 with a post time of 8:35 p.m. eastern (7:35 p.m. CDT) and the feature race, the Astral Moon Overnight, race 2, has lured multiple stakes winner MISS IMPERIAL, who won seven races in 2020 and 2020 Matron Stakes winner CYPRESS POINT, who has been racing in 2021 in Texas.
Lethbridge racetrack of the Rocky Mountain Turf Club opens May 23 with an eight-race card.
The opening of the three western Canadian tracks leaves Woodbine and Fort Erie in Ontario as the only two Thoroughbred tracks still not open in 2021.
A re-opening announcement from Ontario Premier Doug Ford on May 20 placed horse racing (noted as “outdoor horse racing”) as able to start in Step 1, which can begin two weeks after 60% of the Ontario population has received at least one vaccine for COVID-19.
That puts opening day at Woodbine as June 18 (Friday). Woodbine’s opening day for 2021 was set for April 17 before the Ontario ‘stay-at-home order’.
Fort Erie, which had been set to begin June 1, could open on June 15.
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