Hawthorne Outmuscles it's Neighbor!
100 Years of RacingHawthorne Race Course is a family owned business which just celebrated its first 100 years. Hawthorne had a purse index of 13 in the eighties which has increased today to the high twenties. This could be due to the fact that it survived its next door neighbor Sportsmans Park which has been razed.
Without the benefit of a Racino format Hawthorne has attempted to be innovative over the years running harness meets and introducing Quarter Horse racing to Chicago.
Hawthorne joined a long list of Chicago tracks that have gone up in flames when the grandstand was destroyed in 1978. One has to wonder if maybe some of Mrs. O'learys cows weren't being stabled in Chicago area tracks!
Hawthorne Race Course returned in 2011 running a split meet around the summer meet at Arlington Park. Hawthorne has been denied from running harness racing by the Illinois racing commission. In the jockey standings Tanner Riggs and Jozbin Santana tied with 49 wins apiece during the spring meet. Florent Geroux was a runaway winner in the fall meet.
It looks like Hawthorne Race course can now be classified as a parasite track, now that casino gaming is legal in Illinois. Hawthorne did not run it's normal spring meet in 2020, choosing to build the casino during the day and run harness horses at night. It looks like it didn't matter as the COVID-19 virus cancelled most racing anyway.