Our tale of winter woe in the commonwealth of Kentucky actually begins outside state lines. It begins just across the Ohio River from Louisville, in Clarksville, Ind., at a boxy building along Eastern Boulevard’s gritty business strip. It begins at Winner’s Circle Race Sports Pub.
With no legal sports wagering other than horse racing in Kentucky, the parking lot at Winner’s Circle is populated by license plates from the south side of the river. Business is fairly slow on a weekday afternoon, other than the people monitoring the feeds from race tracks across the country. “Dig in, Seven!” one man bellows at a TV screen showing a race from Mahoning Valley, a racino in Youngstown, Ohio. “Dig in!” Judging from the silence that follows the stretch run, the No. 7 horse did not sufficiently dig in.
At night, when the college basketball schedule tips off, business picks up appreciably. “If there were rabbits playing basketball and there was a line on it,” says daytime manager Monte Mattingly, “people would bet it.”
