Midwest Racing News Archive

Harness racing on the 2020 Illinois County Fair Circuit has taken some hits with a quartet of cancellations of their scheduled June racing events The four called off for this year are the fairs for June 8th at Martinsville in Clark County, June 9th at Carlinville in Macoupin County, along with the Macon County fair event at Decatur, slated for June 13 and the June 24th Henry fair at Cambridge. Two more mid-June County Fairs with harness racing have been postponed, Jasper County at Newton (scheduled for June 21st and 22nd) and the June 23rd Greene County at Carrollton. The Newton Fair will be moved to dates in August. The new date for the re-scheduled Carrollton Fair has yet to be announced.

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Unfortunately, we still have no word on when we can return to work. We had been anticipating that by now, we would have a plan in place for a return to live racing without spectators. The decision rests in the hands of the Governor and his staff. As an industry, horsemen, racetracks and the Illinois Dept. of Agriculture have submitted a plan on how we can return to racing safely. The Dept. of Public Health has looked at the plan and agreed with its practices. For the past 7-10 days we have consistently been assured that we would soon get direction on how and when we could proceed. Yet still, no game plan. So what is next?

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