After an unusual summer hiatus, Thoroughbred racing returns to the Chicago metro area when Hawthorne Racecourse opens its 30-day fall meet on Friday with an eight-race card that attracted 64 entries. Thoroughbred racing has not been held in Chicago since Hawthorne closed its spring-summer meet in late June. Whereas the summer dates in Chicago were once filled by Arlington Racecourse, that track did not apply for dates in 2022 after the track’s owner, Churchill Downs Inc., reached an agreement to sell the property last year to the Chicago Bears. Many Chicago horsemen left the area this summer in order to race in nearby Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Iowa. But regulars on the Chicago circuit, including Larry Rivelli and Hugh Robertson, have horses entered on the Friday opener. Trainers with national stables, such as Brad Cox and Tom Amoss, also appear on the opening-day entry list. :: DRF Bets members get FREE DRF Past Performances - Formulator or Classic. Join now! During the spring meet, Hawthorne averaged only 6.67 horses per race, and track officials are hoping to improve on that number this fall. John Walsh, Hawthorne’s assistant general manager, said on Wednesday that the spring meet was “kind of weird” due to Arlington’s absence, and he is hoping that Hawthorne’s decision to keep its stable area open through next year’s fall meet will offer some stability to the state’s horsemen, many of whom left in the spring prior to the closing of the Hawthorne meet. “Everyone will have the whole year, and they won’t have to move,” Walsh said. “That should help us out.” Walsh said that the track expects to have 750 of its 1,000 stalls filled by the end of this week, after the downstate meet at FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing in Collinsville has wrapped up its live racing season. In the spring, Hawthorne bumped its purses significantly, by approximately 50 percent to $190,000 a day, in part by using a surplus in the state’s Horse Racing Fund. With Arlington out of the mix this year, Hawthorne has been accumulating all of the revenue for so-called dark-time money, which is the revenue generated from simulcasting in the state when live racing is not being held. Walsh said that the spring-meet purse level is not sustainable due to the loss of Arlington’s off-track betting network this year, which reduced the “geographic footprint” of the overall network significantly. Though the eight races scheduled for Friday are offering a total of $178,000 in purses, Walsh said that purse distribution will likely average $165,000 for the meet. Still, Hawthorne has added eight new OTBs throughout Illinois since Arlington announced its plans to cease racing. Three of the OTBs also offer sports betting. Post time for the first race is 2:50 Central, as it will be throughout the meet, which runs on a Friday-Sunday schedule through Nov. 27. Hawthorne is also in the midst of a project to build a casino on its property, but that project has yet to be restarted after its construction plans were put on hiatus due to the pandemic in early 2020. Walsh said that construction is likely to restart sometime later this year. Once the casino is up and running, purses at Hawthorne are expected to get a boost from subsidies generated by the operation. Hawthorne’s broadcast team will have a new face this year, as Emily Gullikson, a founding partner of an equine analytics company, OptixEQ, joins the track’s on-air analysts. Gullikson is an experienced handicapper and race analyst who has qualified several times for the National Horseplayers Championship.