Oaklawn's Pope named racing secretary at Belmont Park

ELMONT, N.Y. – Veteran racing official Pat Pope has been hired as racing secretary at Belmont Park, the New York Racing Association announced Thursday.

Pope will continue to be the racing secretary at Oaklawn Park, where he has served in that capacity since 1995, and holds that same position at Prairie Meadows, which is running a Thoroughbred meet through Aug. 11. Pope will come to Belmont on May 30 and work here for three weeks before returning to Prairie Meadows to complete that meet.

Pope then will return to New York and work as the racing secretary for the fall meet, which runs Sept. 7 through Oct. 28. Pope then will go back to Oaklawn Park for the winter meet and return to Belmont next spring.

Martin Panza, the senior director of racing operations for NYRA, will write the condition book for the Saratoga meet. NYRA still needs a racing secretary for Aqueduct.

NYRA has been without a full-time racing secretary since Jan. 26, when Matt Salvato was ruled off the grounds. Though no reason was given for Salvato’s dismissal, he did work in the racing office when the New York State Gaming Commission and NYRA were investigating a situation where racing officials took money in exchange for providing unauthorized people confidential information from the track’s InCompass system.

Of Pope, Panza said: “Pat’s got years of experience in the industry. We think he’ll be a great mentor for our younger crew to develop in the future. Hopefully, he can help us bring some Oaklawn horsemen here in the future, and that would be a good thing for New York racing.”

Panza said Pope’s three-week stint in New York will help him “get his feet wet” so that when he returns in September, “it’s not like that’s his first day.”

In addition to working at Oaklawn and Prairie Meadows, Pope served as the racing secretary at Delaware Park from 2009-13.

Pope did not return phone calls seeking comment.