Keeneland Tickets

Keeneland
Horse racing facility or library? Well ladies and gentlemen, you no longer have to choose between the two. We now bring you a venue that offers both at one place.

You no longer have to travel all those miles to make a trip to the library just to find out which horse to buy.

Located in Lexington, Kentucky and operated by the Keeneland Association, Inc., the global leader in Thoroughbred horse auctions that also conducts world class Thoroughbred horse racing every April and October, Keeneland is a pure bred horse racing facility and sales complex complete with a reference library on the sport housing more than ten thousand volumes in addition to an extensive videocassette collection and a substantial throng of photo negatives and newspaper clippings.

Over a period of 70 years, Keeneland has been serving its executive clientele with state of art horse racing, pedigree horses and even a library that is dedicated to providing complete information on all and every horse breed.

It was founded in 1935 as a nonprofit racing and auction entity on 147 acres of farmland west of Lexington and was owned and operated by Jack Keene. Since its onset, it has been using proceeds from races and its auctions to promote the Thoroughbred industry as well as contributing back to the surrounding community.

Keeneland Race Course has been home to live race meets in April and October since 1936. It added a grass course in 1985. The spring meet contains several preps for the Kentucky Derby (held the first Saturday in May), the most notable of which is the Blue Grass Stakes. The fall meet features several Breeders' Cup preps.

Keeneland takes pride in maintaining not only the racing traditions - it was the last track in North America to broadcast race calls over its public-address system, not doing so until 1997; opposition to allowing slot machines at race tracks in the Commonwealth - but also sustaining the originality of its farms, allowing little change to affect the racing facility.

Most of the racing scenes of the 2003 movie Seabiscuit were shot at Keeneland because of the fact that its appearance has changed relatively little in the last several decades.Lately, however, traditions have given way to several innovations.

The most significant of which is the remodeling of the main track and substitution of the dirt surface with the proprietary Polytrack surface over the summer of 2006 in time for its fall race meeting.

The track has a one and one-sixteenth mile (1710 m) Polytrack oval and a seven and one-half furlong (1509 m) turf oval. As noted earlier, the Polytrack surface was added between the 2006 April and October meetings.

Apart from its racing facilities, Keeneland is also renowned for its horse auctions. Keeneland holds four annual horse auctions that area major source of attraction.

Keeneland Association, Inc. also owns half interest in Turfway Park at Florence, Kentucky; casino and race track giant Harrah's Entertainment owns the other half interest. Through Turfway, Keeneland also owns a part of Kentucky Downs, near Franklin, Kentucky.