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Churchill Downs
Churchill Downs is located on Central Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky
and is a world famous thoroughbred racetrack that is more famous for
hosting the Kentucky Derby every year. It opened officially in 1875,
and had its first Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oakes that year, but
has also hosted the famous Breeder's Cup on six different occasions,
with the last one being held in 2006. The Horseplayers Association
of North America began a rating system in 2009 for the 65
thoroughbred racetracks in North American, and Churchill Downs was
rated number 5. The track was named after Henry and John Churchill,
who had leased 80 acres of land to their nephew, Colonel Meriwether
Lewis Clark, Jr., the grandson of the famous explorer, William
Clark, who became president of the Louisville Jockey Club and
Driving Park Association that began in 1874. Richard Ten Broeck,
Clark's father-in-law, was an avid trainer and horse breeder that
had shown him horse racing by going to the English Derby in London
at Epsom Downs. Two earlier racing tracks had shut down, the Oakland
and Woodlawn tracks, that left a void in the region, which sat along
the Louisville and Nashville Railroad tracks and the perfect medium
to transport horses to and fro. So that is how Churchill Downs
began, but in 1893, Clark was running short of cash, preferring the
longer horse races to this short run that had grown into popularity
by the 1890s, so he sold it to a syndicate led by William Applegate.
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