Belmont Park begins thaw, return to normalcy

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Life slowly returned to normal Monday morning on the Belmont Park backstretch after a winter storm and brutally cold temperatures canceled racing and training for four consecutive days. The weather knocked out power and created broken water pipes, which in turn displaced dozens of backstretch workers and some horses.

A transformer blew on the Belmont backstretch Thursday afternoon during the height of the storm, which brought about a foot of snow. All barns lost power for some period, and many of the older dormitories or cottages lost power for up to 47 hours, according to Glen Kozak, vice president facilities/racing surfaces for the New York Racing Association.

Backstretch workers who resided in those dorms were relocated to the Belmont Café, a heated area on the first floor at Belmont Park that typically is used for simulcasting. NYRA had mattresses stored in the Belmont basement for a soon-to-be-constructed dormitory, and those mattresses were brought to the Belmont Café for workers to sleep on. NYRA and the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association provided food for the backstretch workers.

As power was being restored, the Recreation Hall in the main kitchen at Belmont also became a place for displaced workers to reside.

The efforts to locate and move affected workers from their frigid dorm rooms were led by Kozak; NYRA Racetrack Chaplaincy; Bobby Sica, NYRA’s head of security; Veronica Gallardo of NYRA; as well as three from the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association – president Joe Applebaum, executive director Andy Belfiore, and board member and trainer Richard Schosberg.

“Everyone worked together to make sure people were in good situations,” Applebaum said.

A new transformer, costing approximately $100,000, according to Martin Panza, NYRA’s senior director of racing operations, was located in Pittsburgh on Friday and was transported to Belmont. It was up and running Saturday, helping to restore power by early afternoon.

Some barns were flooded after the freezing temperatures caused water pipes to break. On Sunday night, trainer David Cannizzo had to move approximately 22 horses out of one side of his barn to another barn after a pipe burst and caused flooding.

Cannizzo said he hoped to be able to move those horses back into his barn Tuesday.

A pipe also burst in Barn 30, which is used as a jogging barn during the winter.

“It was an extraordinary event in a barn area that’s sort of old to begin with,” Panza said.

“We’ll work our way through it and people need to be patient.”

There was one reported equine fatality at Belmont, but it’s unclear if it was related to the cold weather. Steve’s Image, a 5-year-old gelding trained by Charlton Baker, died Sunday. He is being sent for an autopsy.

“He got sick, started breathing hard,” Baker said. “The doctor was there treating him, and about three or four hours after that he died. They’re going to do an autopsy. I’ve been in cold weather with horses on the farm and all that stuff and I never had an issue with that.”

No other trainers reported issues with their horses.

“Horses are cold-weather animals,” trainer David Donk said. “It’s people that want to go to Florida more than horses. They’re intelligent animals. They handled it really well. They can change to adverse situations.”

Though NYRA canceled six consecutive days of racing at Aqueduct, from Dec. 31 through Jan. 7, Panza said he would take a wait-and-see approach to adding more dates in March, when racing is scheduled to be conducted three days a week.

“Let’s see what January and February and the rest of the winter brings us,” Panza said Monday. “If we’re going to add some days, we’ll do it in March when we can actually schedule them and put them in the [condition] book and have it make sense.”