KENTUCKY — In pre-COVID years, the Kentucky Derby Festival (KDF) stretches "the most exciting two minutes in sports" into a month-long party.
Obviously, because of the pandemic, those traditional plans have been altered, but there are still some activities that you can put on your to-do list for the week.
Matt Gibson, president and CEO of the Derby Festival, joins In Focus Kentucky to share updates on how KDF is rolling on in 2021, despite some pandemic-related challenges.
"Challenging is a great word to describe it, you know, what a time to try to be producing safe, responsible events. In light of the pandemic that we faced, and our team has used this entire year to really discuss the best way to bring our festival and our celebration in anticipation of that first Saturday in May, and everything that surrounds that to the community in a say, social way, socially distanced way. Normally, over that month of celebration that we've turned this festival into, we'll gather about 1.5 million folks, and as our governor would say, 'you can't be doing that,' and we've worked with a lot of the state, local, and federal partners on developing some best practices on how we are bringing things to the community this week and over the last few weeks, really with some of our very iconic traditional events," explained Gibson.
For a full list of remaining KDF events happening along with some at-home activities, you can participate in, click here.