From the Courier Journal:

With just nine days until the 151st Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs Inc.has turned heads following an announcement to temporarily halt its previously shared plans for a roughly $1 billion, multi-year project at its Louisville racetrack.

In a company earnings call on April 24, Churchill Downs Inc. CEO William “Bill” Carstanjen said the decision to delay its infield renovations and Skye Terrace project came as a result of the changing economic conditions, largely influenced by inflation and ongoing global trade disputes resulting from tariffs.

“A lot has changed in the world in the past nine weeks since that (February announcement), including increased general economic uncertainty and risk of significant inflation, driven in part by the new tariffs that the U.S. intends to charge on products from almost every country in the world,” Carstanjen said. “This has created unanticipated and currently unquantifiable expected cost increases in most materials.”

We can debate the morality of horse racing some other time, but simply put, the Kentucky Derby is pretty much the equivalent of Louisville getting a Super Bowl or an NCAA Final Four every year. So the MAGAts have found a way to screw up one of the biggest financial windfalls Louisville has ever had in the sporting world.

Horse racing is a sport for billionaires. Kentucky’s only billionaire is a horse breeder. From Forbes:

The U.S. has more than 900 billionaires, and at least one Kentucky resident is among their ranks. Tamara Gustavson, the multi-billionaire business executive and horse breeder. She owns Lexington’s Spendthrift Farm, home to 10 Kentucky Derby winners. On this year’s list, Forbes puts Gustavson’s net worth at $8.5 billion. For context, if one were to spend $1 every second, it would take about 269 years to spend that amount of money. That’s an increase from around the same time last year, when Forbes put her net worth north of $7 billion.

And if you’ve ever been to the Derby (or a Super Bowl), you know it’s for the wealthy class. I’ve been to the Derby when it was “affordable” (like a couple of hundred dollars a ticket), but now a general admission ticket to the infield, no seat, is more than $200 on Stubhub, and a ticket for a seat in a section I once sat in years ago is more than $900.

But you look at the Derby attendees and it’s pretty safe to say that a vast majority voted for the people who are screwing up the event’s financial future.