25/26 Racing Schedule 5/1/25
Compiled by Robert Yates
Oaklawn will dramatically alter its 2025-2026 racing schedule, moving to more four-day weeks while greatly reducing its January footprint, after its request for 64 racing dates (Dec. 12-May 2), was unanimously approved by the Arkansas Racing Commission Thursday morning in Little Rock.
Oaklawn will open a week later and again close on Kentucky Derby Day. Oaklawn is scheduled to race nine days in December – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – before its first of 10 scheduled four-day race weeks (Jan. 1-4). Expanded race weeks are the result of Oaklawn returning Thursdays to its schedule.
Oaklawn’s racing calendar evolved into a mostly Friday-Sunday format after the track extended its season into May in 2019 and began opening in December in 2021. Under Arkansas law, Oaklawn is capped at 68 live racing dates each year. The new racing schedule was endorsed by the Arkansas division of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.
“We started ‘Stay Until May’ and that worked very well,” Oaklawn President Louis Cella said. “And working with the horsemen, we said: ‘Let’s push it back to December.’ That worked out great. But the horsemen, to give them a little help with training and bringing jocks in and for their horses, they said they would really like to have four days. But what’s so tricky with our calendar is you have to pull out the calendars and count up to 68 days, which is all the days we can have, and see how they fall on the calendar.”
After racing Jan. 1-4, Oaklawn will be dark until Jan. 30, the last of six scheduled dates for the month. The track will then shift to mostly four-day race weeks (Thursday-Sunday) for the remainder of the season.
“We’re going to have a holiday meet in December and start up at the end of the January with four days, really, to help the horsemen,” Cella said. “We work very well together. Again, it’s an experiment, just like the three days for the weekend (Friday-Sunday) and ‘Stay Until May.’ It’s all an experiment. We’re always willing to change and try things out. That’s what we’re doing.”
Oaklawn’s philosophical shift comes on the heels of a challenging 2024-2025 meeting that was plagued by racing and training cancellations, particularly in January, because of rain, snow and freezing temperatures. Live racing was canceled Jan. 10-12 and Jan. 20 and Oaklawn lost more than 10 days of training during the month. Oaklawn had 14 scheduled January dates this season.
Oaklawn was scheduled to race 65 days this season.
Trainer Kenny McPeek called the new schedule “a good idea.” McPeek won last year’s Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks with Oaklawn stakes winners Mystik Dan and Thorpedo Anna, respectively, and is Oaklawn’s third-leading trainer this season.
“We tend to get a little bit of weather during that period,” McPeek said. “My stable, in particular, is not all that active in January, anyway, or at least hasn’t been historically. I think winter racing altogether is sometimes a little tricky. Frozen tracks are no good for anybody, certainly not the horses.”
Cella said opening a week later will allow Kentucky-based trainers like McPeek more time to settle in after the Churchill Downs fall meeting ends in late November.
The new format will not impact Oaklawn’s lucrative Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks prep schedule, Cella said. Arkansas Derby Day is March 28 – still five weeks before the Kentucky Derby.
Adjustments will have to be made to the overall stakes schedule because of the break in January. One solution, Cella said, is shifting some stakes to Sunday before and after the break.
Oaklawn moved its Rebel Day card from Saturday to Sunday this year because of freezing temperatures. The Rebel (G2), a major Kentucky Derby prep, was among five stakes on a 12-race program that was a stunning success. Estimated attendance was 36,000, with total pari-mutuel handle a robust $21 million.
“We are absolutely looking at that,” Cella said. “We are not afraid of change. It’s all in the numbers and we’re data driven. So, if the numbers show, as it did with the Rebel, I think we’d be foolish if we didn’t take advantage of that.”
Oaklawn will be dark on April 5 in observance of Easter. In another calendar change next season, Oaklawn will be dark March 29, the day after the scheduled Arkansas Derby.
Oaklawn’s 2024-2025 live season ends Saturday.
