Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for March 13, 2025

A good Thursday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a great week and is looking forward to another weekend of racing around the country. All eyes shift to Colonial Downs (which is weird to say in March) as they’ll host the Virginia Derby and Virginia Oaks this weekend. I’m sure you’ve heard, but both races have been moved to a short three-day spring meet that starts today and goes through Saturday.  All races will be on the dirt (also weird to say about Colonial). 

Over my six years calling at Colonial Downs, we’ve probably run 80% of the races on grass. Usually there’s one or two dirt races on each card in addition to the occasional day where we get washed off the turf. But overall, grass is king. So this weekend of all dirt racing will harken back to the opening year of the track in 1997, when they only ran on dirt before the turf course was installed. 

I wanted to give a little overview of the dirt course and some general impressions from my time at Colonial. First of all, the configuration is not your traditional one-mile dirt oval. Rather, it’s a mile and a quarter around, and since I’ve been there, we’ve never run a dirt race beyond a mile and one-eighth. So all races this weekend will be at one turn, including the 1 1/8-mile Virginia Derby, which will start all the way at the end of the chute. They don’t get to the far turn until about the 4 1/2-furlong pole, so by my count (MATH!), that’s half the race going down the straightaway on the backstretch. 

One thing to watch for on Thursday will be to see how fast the main track is playing. The last few years, last year in particular, it’s played lightning fast as far as times and fractions are concerned. But mind you, that was in July and August. Will the cooler weather and the different season slow things down? I suppose we’ll find out. But if you start seeing fast fractions and horses still holding on late, it shouldn’t surprise you because last year it was blazing fast. 

As far as biases or how the track plays, there has almost never appeared to be a consistent and noteworthy pattern. Sometimes for a day or two, but the weather can shift there so much in the summer with storms that it just never seemed to hold a pattern or bias very long. I’ve seen horses come from far back, on the lead, inside, and outside, all the time there. Again, having Thursday and Friday before the big day should give a bit of an idea of how things might play on Saturday's big card. 

I love that they’re trying this new meet, and I’m sad I can’t be up there to call as I’ll be staying here at Tampa because we’re in mid-season. But one cool thing this weekend will be hearing the voice of the Kentucky Derby (G1), Travis Stone, calling, I believe, his first ever spring Derby prep race. I could be mistaken, but I think that’s an accurate statement. He’ll be awesome. I had Travis on the podcast this past Tuesday and he shared some thoughts on the upcoming weekend if you want to hear his takes. 

Good luck this weekend to everyone playing Colonial or wherever you might be attacking the races!