Northfield Downs set to open Saturday

Lexington, KY — Northville Downs will open its 2022 harness racing season on Saturday night (March 12), with a 13-race card that gets underway at 7:30 p.m. The half-mile racetrack in suburban Detroit gets underway a day late when there weren’t enough entries to fill a card for Friday, which was the scheduled opening program.

Back to defend his 2021 driving and training dash titles at Northville Downs is Arthur McIlmurray. The 63-year-old veteran horseman began his driving career in the late 1970s and he has amassed more than 3,700 victories with $16.85 million in purse earnings. He began training a small stable in recent years and while he has several driving titles to his credit at Northville over the years, his training title in 2021 was his first.

McIlmurray currently trains a stable of 10 on a farm he shares with his fiancée, Staci Malady, in Rives Junction, about an hour drive from Northville Downs.

McIlmurray will have a full slate of drives on the card, and he’ll be active in all three of the $10,500 Opens that will be contested. The trio includes the 9-year-old Crystal Rei, who starts from post one in the Open Pace for fillies and mares (race three). McIlmurray also trains the daughter of Cheyenne Rei, who is owned by Malady.

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by Gordon Waterstone, for the USTA