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Originally Posted by sdjcom
I'm not sure either by old latonia i know turfway now is the latonia trk that was there at least 40-50years, so if there was an old latonia in the city of latonia before this track in florence ky then i'm wrong. I just thought she was referring to where the track is now under turfway. My mistake
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Old Latonia was in another location; the site is now under a shopping mall. The Latonia Derby, 10f and once the top race for 3yos in Kentucky, was last run in 1937, as was the Latonia Oaks: this was just about the time that Keeneland opened and that track could be seen as the spiritual successor of Old Latonia in terms of class.
A new track which opened in the late 1950s tried to latch onto the aura of tradition and quality associated with it by reviving the name of Latonia but only managed to drag it into the dregs. So strongly did the new track devalue the name that the management group that took over in the 1980s felt they had to change the name to disassociate its racing product from what had gone on before.