West Virginia Derby 2023

[PA.race.fan]

Hoping Mountainman can shed some light on this…

Why the WV Derby moved to Sunday night? And what will the card look like? Was this just announced, or did they make this change last year?

[Rollingpk3]

https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.co...y-this-season/

[mountainman]

Originally Posted by PA.race.fan

Hoping Mountainman can shed some light on this…

Why the WV Derby moved to Sunday night? And what will the card look like? Was this just announced, or did they make this change last year?

The story linked in the post above this pretty much hits it. Less competition for handle and publicity on a Sunday night, plus no big races crowding our post time.

FWIW..For a long time, we DID run our derby after dark.

One thing the article does not mention is the down-sizing of our purse payout to include just two stakes , both graded, the derby and gov. Unfortunate, for sure, but a realistic revision that's been inevitable for several years now. Hopefully, fewer stakes will result in fewer scratches. And wholesale scratching has more and more gutted our derby undercard in recent years.

[PA.race.fan]

Good points Mountainman!

I assumed didn’t like competing with the Whitney. The Juvenile stakes race was always one of my favorite on Derby day. Seems like that was forever ago.

Also, need a day without rain for the turf races!

[mountainman]

Originally Posted by PA.race.fan

Good points Mountainman!

I assumed didn’t like competing with the Whitney. The Juvenile stakes race was always one of my favorite on Derby day. Seems like that was forever ago.

Also, need a day without rain for the turf races!

On more of an inside note..a less ambitious card does make us more vulnerable to competition from other tracks in the region for the same horses. Not hard at all for them to preempt us by hanging the same races as extras in advance of ours....