LOUISVILLE – Rac­ing at Churchill Downs in the Amer­i­can state of Ken­tucky, from which ace Bar­ba­di­an train­er Saffie Joseph Jr was banned last month, will be sus­pend­ed af­ter Sun­day.

The au­thor­i­ties at the world-renowned race­track an­nounced on Fri­day the un­prece­dent­ed de­ci­sion that the re­main­der of the sched­uled spring-sum­mer meet will be run at El­lis Park more than 100 miles away, start­ing next Sat­ur­day (June 10).

The de­ci­sion was tak­en af­ter the Churchill Downs au­thor­i­ties came un­der pres­sure from the deaths of 12 hors­es at the track since April 27 that has thrown the sport in the Unit­ed States in­to dis­ar­ray.

“What has hap­pened at our track is deeply up­set­ting and ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able,” Churchill Downs CEO Bill Carstan­jen said in a state­ment.

“De­spite our best ef­forts to iden­ti­fy a cause for the re­cent horse in­juries, and though no is­sues have been linked to our rac­ing sur­faces or en­vi­ron­ment at Churchill Downs, we need to take more time to con­duct a top-to-bot­tom re­view of all of the de­tails and cir­cum­stances, so that we can fur­ther strength­en our sur­face, safe­ty, and in­tegri­ty pro­to­cols.”

The shift to El­lis Park was made af­ter Churchill Downs au­thor­i­ties agreed with a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Horse Rac­ing In­tegri­ty and Safe­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (HISA) that a com­plete re­view of safe­ty mea­sures be tak­en.

HISA called emer­gency vet­eri­nar­i­an meet­ings ear­li­er this week and brought in Den­nis Moore, the long-time South­ern Cal­i­for­nia track su­per­in­ten­dent, to in­spect the Churchill Downs track.

“Af­ter con­duct­ing his own in­spec­tion of the sur­face and re­view­ing da­ta col­lect­ed by Rac­ing Sur­faces Test­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry (RSTL) and Churchill Downs, he re­port­ed there were no pri­ma­ry ar­eas for con­cern and has ver­i­fied that the var­i­ous track met­rics an­a­lyzed are con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous years,” a HISA state­ment in­di­cat­ed.

Still the move to El­lis Park was made though there was wide­spread agree­ment among train­ers, jock­eys, and by the ex­perts that there were no is­sues with ei­ther the main track or the turf course.

Of the 12 hors­es that have died, sev­en died in races run over the main track, there was al­so a fa­tal­i­ty in a turf race, and an­oth­er dur­ing train­ing hours.

Churchill Downs sus­pend­ed Joseph and pulled one of his hors­es, Lord Miles, from the Grade 1 Ken­tucky Der­by af­ter two hors­es that he trained died days be­fore the lu­cra­tive event, the first leg of the Amer­i­can Triple Crown.

The 36-year-old con­di­tion­er com­plained in re­cent weeks that he was still await­ing an­swers about the deaths of the two hors­es, and his abil­i­ty to car­ry on busi­ness, and he has en­dured the con­nec­tions of one of his prized hors­es, White Abar­rio switch­ing han­dlers.

Joseph al­so de­cid­ed in re­cent weeks not to send hors­es from his home base in the state of Flori­da to race at oth­er tracks around the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing New York.

He has sad­dled en­tries at Gulf­stream Park in Flori­da, where he has been the cham­pi­on train­er for the past four race meets, and he is set to have one run­ner on the race card on Sat­ur­day, and four on Sun­day.

CMC