Everyone that follows harness racing knows that The Meadowlands lives a “tale of two meets” each year.  The winter meet is comprised almost entirely of overnight races, while the “Championship Meet,” not only includes stakes races but many more races for younger, inexperienced horses.  Interestingly enough, there are some stark contrasts that handicappers should be aware of as well. This past January, The Meadowlands contested six nights of racing (two were cancelled) for a total of 82 races; all of them of the overnight variety.  These 82 races saw an average field size of 9.4 horses, with 47 horses paying less than $10.00 and an average win price of $15.16.  When comparing these figures to the previous May, the first month of the Championship Meet, there were eight nights of racing and 85 races contested.  From those 85 races, 57 of the horses that won paid less than $10.00 to win.  During that month, the average field size was a full horse less than this January (8.4) and the average win price was $11.40.  Included in that average win price were horses that paid $125.40 and $96.80, analytical outliers.  If you remove those two horses, the average win price drops to $8.74.  By comparison, the January results were far more balanced, with no horse above 34-1 winning. The style of racing is also a reflection of these results.  In May 2017, only 15% of the races saw a horse who was farther back than 5th in the first quarter-mile get to the winner’s circle.  This past January, 25% of the races saw horses rally from beyond that point. What does all this mean?  To keep it simple, as field size decreases and the class of races change and weather gets warmer, speed and shorter-prices tend to dominate at The Meadowlands.  It is another curveball thrown into the handicapping spectrum, but these numbers say that we should not be handicapping races in May the same way we handicap races in January.  If you expand the months, the result remain similar.  In May, June and July, the average win price is nearly $4.00 less than January, February and March.  That may not sounds like much, but it’s a 33% difference. What really drives the prices down are the stakes races.  Over the course of the Championship Meet in 2017, The Meadowlands contested 74 races that would qualify as a stake race.  From those 74 races, 12 (or 16.2%) saw a horse pay more than $10.00 to win.  The average win price of a stake race at The Meadowlands last year was $8.13.  If you remove Check Six’s 38-1 upset in the Sam Mckee Memorial, that number drops to $7.16 (or 5/2 odds) for the other 73 stake events. I haven’t crunched my own betting numbers, but if I had to guess, given my propensity for looking for value in races, I probably do a lot better at The Meadowlands in the winter than I do in the summer months.  If you like to bet chalk, the reverse is probably true. Recently Jeff Gural spoke publicly about considering eliminating the stakes races at The Meadowlands to prop-up the purses for overnight races and draw better field size in the months where horses are at a premium.  The Meadowlands adds somewhere around $4 – 4.5 Million in purse money to stakes races every year.  From April 1st to August 5th, there are 36 days of racing at The Meadowlands.  Using simple math, if $4 Million were taken from the stakes program and spent on those 36 days of overnight racing, the total purses of an average racing program would increase $111,000, or somewhere around $9,000 to $10,000 per race.  In theory, the bottom-level money condition could go for $15,000 if they so chose, while the Preferred/Open Level could get back to $35,000.  Or The Meadowlands could increase the money conditions somewhat and really put money into races for the younger horses.  I’ll dive further into this idea in my next column, but for the purposes of this piece, the idea of no stakes races at The Meadowlands should not disappoint the bettor nearly as much as it would disappoint the fan.  Sure, it would be unfortunate to see, but field size would increase, the average win price would increase and other than Meadowlands Pace night and Hambletonian Day, handle would likely increase as well. But until that time, bettors should definitely be aware of the fact that we have passed the point of the Meadowlands meet where value is abundant and we have arrived at the point where form and speed tend to hold-up much better. My advice is to handicap and wager accordingly.