A nine-race card Saturday brings the curtain down on the 2021 racing season at Arlington. It’s nearly certain that curtain won’t be rising again – dark times in Illinois racing. The Illinois Racing Board on Thursday handed out 2022 racing dates during its annual dates award meeting. Arlington and its parent company, Churchill Downs Inc., declined to apply for any. CDI, which had acquired a major stake in nearby Rivers Casino, also didn’t apply for a casino license at Arlington even after permission was granted when an expanded gambling bill became Illinois law during summer 2019. And not long afterward, CDI executives began making ominous statements regarding Arlington’s future – namely, that it didn’t have one as a venue for horse racing. This past February, CDI announced it would sell the 326-acre Arlington parcel for development. Bids were solicited during a window that closed in June. Two groups interested in continuing racing at Arlington made offers, as did the Chicago Bears. CDI has kept its intentions silent as the Arlington meet winds down. No one close to the situation has any confidence Arlington will host races after Saturday. “We have to take the focus off trying to save Arlington,” said Chris Block. “There’s nothing more we can do right now.” Block has been training at Arlington since 1999, his family’s racing and breeding partnership, Team Block, a cornerstone of Illinois racing for decades. Block also sits on the board of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and recently filed to run for president of the organization in an election this fall. “It all kind of hits home this week, the realism of it coming right in our face. It’s very disappointing,” Block said. Arlington opened in 1927, part of the Chicago circuit that until the last couple decades of the 20th century was a North American racing hub. After a catastrophic fire in 1985, the grandstand was rebuilt in grand style; Arlington, site of the first $1 million race, holds a legitimate place among iconic racecourses worldwide. Realists now expect the massive grandstand at some point to be razed. “We hear nothing about plans,” ITHA executive director David McCaffrey said Wednesday. “I was just on a call with a city council member in Arlington Heights, and they said everything has gone quiet for the last six weeks. Our hands are collectively raised saying, ‘What’s going on?’ ” A CDI spokesperson didn’t reply to a request this week for comment on the status of Arlington’s sale. Roy Arnold, a former Arlington president spearheading an investment group that bid on the property and wants to maintain racing at Arlington, has told ITHA officials he’s heard nothing in weeks from CDI. Speculation aside, there will be no racing next year at Arlington, leaving a gaping hole in the Chicago circuit. With the region’s Standardbred tracks all shuttered, Hawthorne Racecourse now will host the only horse racing of any sort in the Chicago area. The 2022 dates approved Thursday are less than ideal: Harness racing in January, February, and March, followed by a Thoroughbred meet in April, May, and June. Thoroughbreds will be permitted to stay at Hawthorne after that meeting but will have no place to train during a harness meet in July, August, and part of September. The Thoroughbred seasons resumes Sept. 23 and continues through the end of the year. The Thoroughbred season in Chicago consists of 124 days in 2021 but is down to just 76 during 2022. Fairmount Park in southern Illinois will run a 61-day meet between April 19 and Sept. 24. Chicago horsemen next year, during the time they’d be racing at Arlington, will become nomads, looking for a place to train and race their horses during the heart of the summer season. “That schedule that was put together has a lot of horsemen frustrated,” Block said. “I know all the negatives, but there’s no other way around it to allow both breeds to have some sort of schedule. It’s the best we can do right now.” Hawthorne becomes the sole dark-period simulcast host for all of 2022, earning commissions on simulcast wagers that always have been split between racetracks. The track began work on a racino last winter – work that has stalled but is expected to resume this fall – and says it will offer relatively healthy purses in 2022. None of which will compensate for the absence of Arlington, which has planned a fireworks display following Saturday’s races. “I don’t think anyone is going out of there with a smile on our face,” Block said. Track announcer John Dooley “makes his last call and we’re going back to the barn, holding onto a bunch of horses while they set off fireworks. I don’t think that’s what anyone had in mind.”