Laurel officials monitoring track renovations; racing might resume Sunday
Officials at Laurel Park in Maryland will decide over the next 48 hours whether to resume live racing as of Sunday and add additional race dates next week to make up for recent cancelations brought on by weather and continuing problems with its main dirt track, the officials said in a conference call with horsemen on Tuesday afternoon.
Mike Rogers, the acting president of the track, told horsemen that work will continue on the surface over the next two days, and that officials will monitor workouts and take input from horsemen before deciding to take entries on Thursday for a Sunday card. Tim Keefe, the president of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, said that he “strongly supported” the plan to race on Sunday, provided the racing-surface renovations continue as planned.
“I think there’s no question we should take the entries for Sunday,” Keefe said.
Racing has not been conducted at Laurel Park since Jan. 2, with last week’s four cards canceled due to a snowstorm early in the week that laid bare additional problems with the track’s racing cushion. Laurel called in several other track superintendents to oversee a makeover of the cushion early this week, including Glen Kozak, the vice president of operations and capital projects at the New York Racing Association.
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Kozak said on the conference call that crews have stripped away the entire cushion of the track and added “mason sand, or concrete sand” to the mixture before laying the surface back down and grading it. Horses were able to gallop over a portion of the surface on Monday and Tuesday, and horses are expected to begin working over the track on Thursday.
“It’s just a matter of getting this product into the sand, into the cushion, so that it can be maintained,” Kozak said. “It’s moving along really well.”
A number of horsemen supported the idea for Laurel to add racing dates to the schedule next week and, perhaps, into February. Laurel is currently running on a four-day week, in part to make up dates that were canceled in December, when the dirt track wasn’t draining properly in the face of colder weather. Rogers replied that he would conduct staff meetings over the next two days to see if the track would have enough employees to run the additional days.
Horsemen are definitely frustrated, said A. Ferris Allen, the longtime Maryland trainer who is on the MTHA board.
“Horsemen have been very patient through all of this process, but a lot of people are hurting economically out here from the way this has been handled,” Allen said.
Last year, Laurel’s entire main track was completely replaced, in part to address concerns raised by horsemen. The months-long project required racing and training to be moved to Laurel’s sister track, Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, disrupting racing and training schedules. Then, more cancellations came in December after it became apparent that the track was not handling cold weather well.
One trainer on the conference call asked Rogers if the company thinks that the current renovations represent a “long-term” solution to the problems.
“Once we get the cushion to handle these weather fluctuations we’ll be in good shape,” Rogers replied.