Ruidoso Downs has cancelled Thursday’s $150,000 Mountain Top Futurity, and all other races for Thoroughbreds through Sunday, because of damage to the racetrack caused by flash floods last weekend, but have made sufficient progress on renovation work on the track to allow a weekend of Quarter Horse racing beginning Thursday. Limited training is scheduled to resume on the Thoroughbred track on Thursday, Ruidoso Downs general manager Rick Baugh said in an interview on Wednesday. Training was canceled from Sunday through Wednesday because of flood damage. Ruidoso Downs has a separate 550-yard chute used for Quarter Horse races that was not damaged in the flooding, allowing racing to be held on that track this week. The Mountain Top Futurity for New Mexico-bred had a field of 10 and was scheduled to be part of an 11-race program on Thursday. The prize money will now be divided equally among the runners that qualified from two time trials on June 7. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. Overall, three Thoroughbred races, including two for claiming horses, scheduled for Thursday have been canceled. Friday’s 13-race program consists entirely of Quarter Horse time trials for the Zia Futurity on July 21 and is unchanged since the overnight was published last Friday. Revised overnights for Saturday and Sunday, eliminating all races for Thoroughbreds and replacing them with Quarter Horse time trials for the Rainbow Derby and Rainbow Oaks, were being finalized on Wednesday, Baugh said. The Rainbow Derby and Rainbow Oaks trials were originally scheduled for Sunday and then postponed to Monday. Both of those days of racing were lost to flooding that inundated the first turn, a six-furlong chute, and part of the backstretch of the racetrack with mud, debris, and water from the burn area of nearby forest fires. The finals of the Rainbow Derby and Rainbow Oaks have been postponed from July 13 to the weekend of July 20-21. Ruidoso Downs has not raced since Saturday when it completed 15 of 17 Quarter Horse races before the Rui Ruidoso, a normally small river that runs through the track’s infield, burst its banks. The runoff flowed from areas burned in forest fires that began on June 17. The fires have largely been contained but have burned more than 25,000 acres in the area. The track did not race on the weekend of June 21-23 because of the fires. Baugh said the difficult aspect of the renovation is removing mud from the track that contains “burn sludge” from the areas lost to fires. “It’s really slick,” Baugh said. “We’ve got to take that off. We can’t have it on the racetrack.” Sand sourced from Orogrande, N.M., about 80 miles southwest of the track, is being used to rebuild the surface, Baugh said. He said that debris that clogged the river and contributed to the racetrack damage has been cleared on racetrack property as well as upstream. The reconstruction comes at a time of the summer when Ruidoso, which has an altitude of 6,400, is prone to intense rainstorms. More than an inch of rain fell in areas around the track on Saturday and Sunday, leading to severe flooding that led to mud damage in some homes. More than 1,400 structures have been lost because of the fire. :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. Baugh said training on Thursday will be limited to jogging and galloping, with no workouts permitted this week. On Tuesday, the New Mexico State Racing Commission asked officials with The Downs at Albuquerque to form a contingency plan for an earlier start to its race meeting if Ruidoso Downs is unable to resume racing for Thoroughbreds in the near future. Albuquerque is scheduled to run its late summer and fall meeting from Aug. 29 to Oct. 27. The state racing commission expressed concern about another flood affecting Ruidoso’s ability to race. The 10 juveniles that qualified for the Mountain Top Futurity may reappear in the Rio Grande Señor and Rio Grande Señorita futurity trials on July 19. The finals of those $125,000 races, run at 5 1/2 furlongs, are Aug. 4. The Mountain Top Futurity qualifiers included four runners trained by Todd Fincher, who won the $20 million Saudi Cup in Saudi Arabia in February with Senor Buscador, and trial race winner Waning Crescent, trained by Chip Woolley. In 2009, Woolley trained Mine That Bird to an upset win in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Simon Buechler had morning-line favorite Holy Rebel ready for the Mountain Top Futurity and said on Wednesday that the gelding is a probable starter for the Rio Grande Señor Futurity. Buechler had seven Thoroughbred entered this weekend that will not be able to race. A group of government agencies, including the United States Forest Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs, announced on Wednesday that the larger of the two wildfires, which consumed more than 17,500 acres, was caused by a lightning strike.  That fire was concentrated northwest of the track, partially on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. Rain that fell in those burn areas contributed significantly to the runoff that caused the Saturday flood, both in the Ruidoso community and at the racetrack. Government officials said in their statement on Wednesday that the cause of a smaller fire south of the track remains under investigation with a $10,000 reward to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the cause of the fire. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.