Call me “the woman who left Keeneland to drive to Charles Town.”  It’s true, even if no one would believe it.

Charles Town Races sits in the Blue Ridge Mountains, roughly equidistant, a 90-minute car trip, from both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It’s been around since 1933, and visitors walking through the facility will see frequent reminders of the track’s history: I counted at least three walls of pictures and plaques and newspaper clippings, commemorating Charles Town’s recent and distant past.

Its place in racing’s present, on the other hand, is a somewhat shaky one, the grandstand and clubhouse dwarfed by an enormous casino on which Charles Town relies for existence, and when I first visited the backstretch five years ago, horsemen were already grumbling about how they were treated by the gaming executives.

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