On Sunday, March 1 it was reported that a draw would be required to determine which parties would secure a slot for this fall’s anticipated Mohawk Million at Woodbine Mohawk Park. Woodbine Entertainment has since stated that information included in the report was inaccurate.

Last fall, Woodbine Entertainment announced that the inaugural Mohawk Million would be held at Woodbine Mohawk Park in 2020. The $1 million (USD) race for two-year-old trotters will take place on Saturday, September 26 at the Campbellville, Ont. oval.

The Mohawk Million is a buy-in stakes event in which nine of 10 slots in the race are available for purchase. The tenth and final spot will be awarded, at no cost, to the 2020 William Wellwood Memorial winner. Buy-in slots each cost $110,000 (USD), and they were sold before February 17, 2020. Horses do not have to be declared until closer to the date of the race, and the slots themselves can be leased, traded or sold.

According to the initial report, a total of 10 entities had entered submissions to acquire one of the nine available slots for the Mohawk Million, and that therefore a draw for the nine slots would be conducted at some point in March. The report had also stated that, later this week, Woodbine Entertainment would be revealing the identities of the parties that entered for a slot in the 2020 Mohawk Million.

Mark McKelvie, Woodbine Mohawk Park’s manager of communications and content, has since stated that the information in the initial report was inaccurate.

“There will not be a draw for the Mohawk Million slots,” McKelvie conveyed Sunday night via social media. “We received 10 payments from nine different individuals/groups. One individual submitted for two slots. They will only receive one, as the race filled.”

A field of Standardbreds heads into the first turn at Woodbine Mohawk Park.

Woodbine Entertainment Chair Clay Horner is among those in the industry that is anticipating the Mohawk Million, and has referred to the new stakes as “the most fantastic thing to happen to Canadian racing and the sport in years."

"This is a marquee event and the beauty of it is not a penny comes from the overnight purse pool or ‘robbing from Peter to pay Paul’ in other [stakes] races,” Horner was quoted as saying. “It is all self funded from the slot purchases."

In speaking of how the eyes of the harness racing world will be on Mohawk this fall, Horner explained that, "In the month of September, we (Woodbine Mohawk Park) will offer the Champlain Stakes, William Wellwood and Mohawk Million for total prize money of $2 million. Nowhere else in harness racing is that duplicated."

(With files from the Hamilton Spectator)