NYRA confirms early start for 2019 Saratoga meet

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – It’s official. This summer’s Saratoga meet will be expanded by one week, with 40 days of racing spread out over eight weeks instead of seven.

Opening day will be Thursday, July 11, with closing day remaining Labor Day, Sept. 2. The first week will consist of four days of racing. The next six weeks will be five days of racing with Mondays and Tuesdays dark. The meet will end with a six-day race week.

The Saratoga meet was first extended to 40 days in 2010, a schedule that consisted of one four-day race week and six six-day race weeks.

With the additional week of racing at Saratoga, that means the Belmont Park spring/summer meet will be shortened to 48 days. It will run from April 26 through July 7, the NYRA announced Thursday. Last year, the Belmont spring/summer meet was 54 days.

New York Racing Association officials indicated the change to this year’s schedule was largely due to the planned start of construction this spring of a 19,000-seat arena for the National Hockey League’s New York Islanders. The arena will be on the grounds of Belmont Park, and will take up a significant portion of the backyard.

However, NYRA officials have long wanted to conduct racing on a five-day-a-week schedule in Saratoga, so this schedule change will likely be permanent, barring an unlikely negative impact on business.

In December, a state oversight body approved an environmental impact study regarding the arena project at Belmont, basically keeping it on schedule for a ground-breaking sometime in May. The exact start date for construction still is undetermined, but NYRA officials had to make decisions regarding its racing schedule.

“Given the fluid nature surrounding the start of potential construction of a new arena at Belmont Park, we believe it is the responsible action to move our racing operations to Saratoga Race Course slightly earlier than usual this summer,” David O’Rourke, NYRA’s interim president and CEO said in a press release. “We appreciate the patience of our horsemen, fans and the community in awaiting this announcement. We look forward to returning to Saratoga and are working diligently with our stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition to this new calendar.”

NYRA said it will release a Saratoga stakes schedule “in the near future.” It did confirm that Whitney Day will be Aug. 3 and Travers Day will be Aug. 24.

In addition to the arena, the $1.2 billion Belmont project also includes 450,000 square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment, as well as a hotel. There has not been a timetable announced on the start of those projects.

The arena project will impact training and racing at Belmont Park. Construction of the arena will take place on weekdays and will likely prompt officials to close Belmont’s main track earlier than usual for morning training while likely prompting a later-than-usual first post for weekday racing.