Colorado Racing Commission Approves Bally's Arapahoe Park for 30-Day Summer Meet

Shannon Rushton has been fighting to get horses on the track at Arapahoe Park for two years. On March 18, the Colorado Racing Commission gave him a cleaner path than he has seen in a while, unanimously approving Bally's Arapahoe Park's application for a 30-day Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse summer meet that will run June 12 through August 16.

The approval clears a regulatory hurdle that twice threatened to kill live racing at Colorado's only Thoroughbred racetrack. Electrical code compliance problems dogged the facility in both 2024 and 2025, turning what should have been routine meet approvals into multi-month negotiations between Bally's, the Commission, and the Colorado Division of Racing.

The 2024 chapter was particularly ugly. The Commission issued conditional approval in April of that year with a May 1 start date, but a special meeting on April 22 ended with the summer meet canceled outright. The problem: Arapahoe County had inspected the backstretch barns, which were originally certified safe at construction in 1984, and flagged that the wiring no longer met current code for agricultural buildings. The county would not issue a certificate of occupancy, and without it, seasonal employees hired by the Division of Racing Events could not legally be cleared to work on the property. Pulling permits for a full rewire carried a timeline of up to 16 weeks from application, pushing realistic work completion to mid-to-late August at the earliest.

Bally's had a hard deadline of September 11 to hold a live race or risk losing simulcasting signal imports entirely. That created pressure to find a workaround. According to Colorado Racing Commission documentation, Arapahoe Park staff discussed having the utilities company simply shut off electricity to the backside of the track to sidestep the rewiring requirement altogether. The Commission eventually approved an amended application in June 2024, with conditions that included South Metro Fire Protection District approval for generator use, confirmation of the association veterinarian's licensure, submission of an IMEG engineering report to satisfy the county agreement, and a test barn plan covering collection processing, sample storage, security, and chain of custody, all to be completed before July 22.

Rushton indicated during the March 18 virtual meeting that the track has moved beyond the patchwork fixes of those prior seasons. "All the barns that we had available last year that were permitted and approved after we did the rewiring on them are the barns that we are going to begin the meet with as we get the other barns with bathrooms completed," he said. He also indicated he does not believe electrical issues will threaten the 2026 meet.

The approval comes with one additional financial wrinkle in the background. Colorado had been accepting simulcast wagers on out-of-state greyhound races since greyhound racing was banned in the state in 2014. A portion of the taxes from those wagers flowed directly into the horse racing purse fund. That revenue stream ended October 1, 2024, when a new state law eliminated simulcast wagering on greyhounds, tightening the financial environment for purse support heading into the 2026 season.

Elsewhere at the same Commission session, Cowboy Racing, the operation company affiliated with the new Thunder Plains facility and co-owned by Will Edwards and his father Bill Edwards, was approved on a split vote to run 16 days of live racing in 2026, primarily in October and early November. Thunder Plains is scheduled to host its inaugural race day on October 2. Commissioner Daniel Schiffer backed immediate approval, noting that if a planned transfer to Bally's Arapahoe Park as operating partner falls through, 1/ST Racing executive Scott Daruty has committed to remain involved. "We are the operator of the project at record, and we have every intention of operating a successful race meet next fall," Daruty said.

For Arapahoe Park, the focus now shifts to getting those remaining barns finished before the gates open June 12.