The end of a career is near for NYRA stakes coordinator Byrnes
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – There’s a brown wooden box with a slit in it on his desk that reads Stakes Nominations. It may be the only thing that has been in the racing office at the New York Racing Association longer than Andrew Byrnes.
“I said to myself in March, I’m taking that with me,” said Byrnes, NYRA’s stakes coordinator since 1999, who announced his retirement in January.
Byrnes will retire from his position with the closing of this Saratoga meet. Byrnes, who worked part-time jobs at NYRA in high school and college as a gardener and then in the mail room, joined NYRA full-time in the Horse Identification office in 1992. He gradually worked his way to the racing office and became coordinator in 1999.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Byrnes, 58, said. “I don’t have a family, a wife and kids, or mortgage, which some people were blessed with, and I was blessed in another way. I said to myself, ‘If I can achieve that goal of retiring and doing the things I want to do while I’m still capable of doing it, I was going to take advantage of it.’
“It’s not that I’m leaving because I’m disenchanted with the game or anything. I knew it was time in my heart to try a different challenge.”
The challenge is not yet defined, but his days of taking stakes nominations and calling horsemen to see if they would run or hustle some into a race that was coming up light are complete.
“I am proudest of when you give somebody a little bit of a push and they do go into a race and they do run well,” Byrnes said.
There have been ample instances of that throughout his career. It was just two years ago when the Grade 1 Whitney Stakes lost two of its five expected starters on a Monday. Thankfully, entries didn’t close until Wednesday. Byrnes, admittedly in panic mode, called trainer Rick Dutrow to inquire if he and the owners would be interested in running White Abarrio. Ultimately, they did, and White Abarrio won by six lengths.
“When he won by six, I was like, ‘What did I do here?’ ” Byrnes said.
Byrnes said he will maintain his residence in Queens, N.Y., but will also spend time with his family – he has three older brothers – in North Carolina.
“It’s been such an enjoyable run,” Byrnes said. “There are so many enjoyable moments and so many really good people, the relationships I was able to cultivate. I guarantee you one of these days I’m going to wake up in a cold sweat thinking I got eight [stakes] closings today, but it’s the people that I’m going to miss.”
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