Belmont fall meet may be moved to Aqueduct; Saratoga to run one-turn mile races
The 2022 fall meet at Belmont Park on Long Island may be moved to Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park in Queens, as a result of planned construction work at Belmont after the track’s summer meet closes, officials for the New York Racing Association told a state regulatory board on Friday.
The work to construct an underground tunnel leading from an area on the backside near the three-quarter pole of the racetrack to the infield is expected to begin this summer, following the completion of a retaining wall outside the track. Because the tunnel will be built under all three racing surfaces at Belmont, David O’Rourke, the chief executive officer of NYRA, said that the construction may require racing to be suspended, necessitating the relocation to Aqueduct.
NYRA officials had announced the tunnel project last year, but the association had not publicly noted that racing may need to be moved to Aqueduct until the meeting on Friday with the Franchise Oversight Board, which has broad powers to review NYRA’s operating and capital budgets. The tunnel will allow both vehicular and pedestrian access, and NYRA officials have said that they plan to construct areas for ontrack patrons in the infield, as well as areas for “community access.”
Patrick McKenna, a NYRA spokesman, said after the meeting that “no final decision” has been made on the move to Aqueduct, and that the decision will need to wait until some planning work has been completed.
“NYRA is required to make certain assumptions for budgeting purposes, and those assumptions were discussed today with the Franchise Oversight Board,” McKenna said. “While it is possible the Belmont fall meet will be conducted at Aqueduct, there will be no final decision on the fall meet until we have a clear picture of the permitting process and construction timeline for the infield tunnel at Belmont Park.”
The fall meet is scheduled to run for 28 days from Sept. 15 to Oct. 30, followed by the regular fall-winter meet at Aqueduct. If the fall meet is moved, racing will likely be conducted at Aqueduct consecutively for seven months bridging 2022 to 2023.
Saratoga chute will allow for one-turn mile race
Upstate, NYRA officials told the board that they plan to “reconstruct” a chute at Saratoga Racecourse that will allow for the running of one-turn mile dirt races at the track for the 2022 meet. The Wilson chute allowing for one-mile races was dismantled in 1972 to provide additional parking, although NYRA ran 25 races using the old chute in 1992.
Part of that project will involve widening the first turn five to nine feet, according to Glen Kozak, the vice president of facilities and racing surfaces.
“That is the narrowest spot on the track, so what currently is that horse path that goes around by the harrow yard, we’re going to expand the track right over to the harrow yard,” Kozak said recently. The work will take approximately two months in the spring, Kozak told the board on Friday.
Kozak said the planned chute, which joins and runs across the clubhouse turn, will require the loss of some parking that is located near the first turn as well as the relocation of some trees and the movement of a camera stand.
Keith Doleshel, NYRA’s racing secretary, speaking recently, said the biggest advantage of having the mile chute will be to help maintain field size in the case where turf races are rained off to the main track. Currently, turf races scheduled for a mile on turf are shortened to seven furlongs while turf races scheduled for 1 1/16 miles are run at 1 1/8 miles on dirt.
“I think the biggest advantage would be for off-the-turf races where we were stuck going farther than the carded turf distance was, and that was a tough enough ask for turf horses to run, let alone [farther],” Doleshel said. “We card a lot of mile-and-a-sixteenth races because we can run them on both turf courses.”
Doleshel said he would also have the flexibility to card one-mile dirt races.
“We’re at a little bit of a disadvantage of having a quarter of a mile where you’re in no-man’s land,” Doleshel said. “You can go seven-eighths or a mile and an eighth, and there isn’t a lot of demand for two-turn races, so being able to split the difference in certain categories should be an advantage.”
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In the decades after the Wilson chute was dismantled, NYRA carded one-mile races that started in the middle of the first turn, but inside posts had a huge advantage. Saratoga stopped conducing mile dirt races in the early 1990s.
* NYRA officials also told the board that an artificial surface will be laid down in the spring at Belmont’s quarter-mile training track, a sparingly used oval known as the Pony Track. Glen Kozak, said that the installation of the artificial surface will allow NYRA officials to gather information on what maintenance would be required for other artificial surfaces that may be installed at NYRA tracks in the future.
“It’s something we can learn from, we can poke holes in,” Kozak said.
Kozak also told the board that the association plans to go ahead with a project to renovate the Post Bar at Saratoga adjacent to the paddock that will entail the construction of a two-story building in which the top floor would be a climate-controlled bank of suites that would provide vantage points to see the paddock and horse walkway from the paddock to the track. The lower story would remain an open-air bar that had previously been covered by a tented canopy.
The board also approved an easement at the Saratoga property that will allow the construction of a medical clinic serving backstretch workers at the track. The hospital is being funded by John Hendrickson, the husband of the late Marylou Whitney, using his own funds and funds from her estate.
- additional reporting by David Grening