Horses stabled in a second Churchill Downs barn placed under quarantine by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture because of confirmed cases of equine herpes virus at the track will be allowed to return to limited training on May 23. Horses in barn 38, all of which are trained by Steve Asmussen, are the latest to meet the requirements developed by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture for a return to training apart from the track's general horse population. The Asmussen-trained horses will participate in separate training sessions that already include horses from barn 39. Those horses, which are trained by Paul J. McGee, Bill Cesare and Ron Ellis, were allowed to return to separate training on Saturday. The horses in both barns remain in quarantine and are not permitted to mix with the rest of the horse population at Churchill Downs. That leaves barn 6 as the only Churchill Downs barn in which horses remain completely confined. Barn 6 houses horses trained by Ronny Werner. The training schedule for the horses affected by the equine herpes virus quarantine includes late morning sessions at 11 a.m. (all times EDT) on Monday and Tuesday, when the track is not racing. Evening training at 6:15 p.m. is planned on racing days Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. No separate training is planned on Fridays because of Churchill Downs' late 2:45 p.m. post on that day. Regular training at Churchill Downs is conducted daily from 6 to 10 a.m.
The Kentucky Department of Agriculture requires that no horse in a quarantined barn display any clinical symptoms of equine herpes over a seven-day period. When that requirement is met, a blood screening is then performed on every horse in the barn. If all results of the blood screens are "negative," horses in that barn are then permitted to participate in the limited training hours.
