If you’re reading this in Saratoga Springs – or anywhere else for that matter – you are almost certainly aware that the Belmont Stakes will be held for the third and final time Saturday at venerable Saratoga Race Course. The Belmont is back for a second encore on Union Avenue, as the new Belmont Park nears completion.
When the third leg of the Triple Crown heads back downstate next year, the new Belmont will be fully operational – and by all accounts, spectacular. A five-story, 275,000-square-foot building will welcome fans, and four new racing surfaces, representing a $100 million investment by the New York Racing Association, await the equine athletes.
That is in addition to the $455 million loan New York State provided NYRA to construct a modern grandstand featuring a variety of hospitality offerings and amenities.
The new Belmont – which replaces a building more than three times the size that was built in 1905 and renovated in 1968 – will open Friday, Sept. 18, kicking off a fall meet with 32 graded stakes and 72 overall, worth $17.7 million in purses. There will be a series of major Saturday cards, from September through Dec. 5.
NYRA is coming out of the gate hot with the Jockey Club Gold Cup – which comes with a free pass to the Breeders’ Cup Classic – scheduled for Opening Day. The Jockey Club, established in 1919, has been run at Saratoga the last five years.
“There was definitely intentionality in terms of how we built out the stakes schedule,” said Andrew Offerman, NYRA senior vice president of racing and operations. “Kicking off the new facility on September 18 with that race felt like an important thing to do, and hopefully it’s a race that can serve as the key Breeders’ Cup prep not only this year but also next year when it returns to Belmont.”
The Breeders’ Cup will indeed return, after what will be a 22-year absence. NYRA is intent on Belmont returning to prominence as a logical spot for horses to make their final preps, with six automatic qualifiers among the 10 graded stakes on the first two Saturdays of the fall meet. They include the Flower Bowl (also back from Saratoga and a qualifier for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf), Vosburgh (Sprint), Champagne (Juvenile), Pilgrim (Juvenile Turf), Miss Grillo (Juvenile Filles Turf) and Futurity (Juvenile Turf Sprint). Throw in the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic and Grade 1 Frizette and you have Super Saturday squared.
“Bringing the Jockey Club back home, and as we built out the schedule, our intention was to try to promote big Saturdays coming out of Saratoga and continuing through the fall meet,” Offerman said. “Bringing the Flower Bowl back to Belmont and bringing that race back to a mile and a quarter also reflected the commitment to return some of those historic races from Saratoga to Belmont Park.”
With three years to plan, NYRA had ample time to incentivize connections to run at the new Belmont – and not only those with an eye on the Breeders’ Cup. In the interest of attracting more horse flesh, NYRA will institute the Big Apple Bonus, offering $3,000 to $6,000 to horses shipping or relocating to Belmont from other jurisdictions.
Beginning Sept. 18, horses relocating or shipping from racetracks less than 400 miles from Belmont Park will qualify for a $3,000 bonus for their first start at the fall meet, shared by the owner ($2,000) and trainer ($1,000).
Horses relocating or shipping from racetracks more than 400 miles from Belmont will qualify for a $6,000 bonus for their first start of the fall meet, with $4,000 paid to the owner and $2,000 to the trainer.
Horses will qualify for an additional owner incentive of $2,500 for making three consecutive starts at Belmont Park.
“This was an attempt to put a single branded bonus program together to attract people to return to racing downstate at Belmont Park that have not participated in New York over the course of the prior year,” Offerman said. “And it was really an effort to incentivize and motivate people within not only the region but throughout the country to take another look at Belmont Park, at NYRA, and at downstate racing and what it can offer.”
Another new initiative is the Empire Trillium Series, 14 races on Tapeta at Belmont and Woodbine in Canada worth $3.2 million, open to New York- and Canadian-breds. There will be eight races at Belmont starting Dec. 26 and six at Woodbine concluding July 31. The signature events will be the $300,000 Long Island Derby and $300,000 Long Island Oaks Jan. 23 at Belmont.
The races at Belmont will be for 2- and 3-year-olds, while the Woodbine races will be for 3-year-olds and up.
“We were searching for a partnership opportunity with a jurisdiction that ran primarily on Tapeta, which obviously Woodbine fits,” Offerman said of the synthetic surface. “Building out a stakes program that gives an opportunity for New York-breds and Canadian-foaled horses to compete together seemed logical.”
Perhaps the best news for horsemen is an increase in overnight purses from last year ranging from 16 to 32 percent. New York-breds will run for the same purses as open-company horses in maiden special weight ($100,000), first-level allowances ($105,000) and second-level allowances ($108,000).
“We’ve been talking for an extended period of time about how to further develop the New York foal crop because of its importance to the number of race days and the number of races that we run,” Offerman said. “The increase in those purses for the fall reflects that commitment to the New York-bred horse, and hopefully the ability for that foal crop to continue to buck national trends, where across the country we’ve seen foal crop decreases and the New York-bred population remains relatively steady or has even ticked up marginally.”
The fall meet will start strong and end strong, with several signature turf races scheduled for Nov. 28, including the Jockey Club Derby, Jockey Club Oaks, Man ’o War and the Long Island.
Closing weekend will be highlighted by Cigar Mile Day Dec. 5, a card that will also include the Brooklyn, Demoiselle, Elite Power and Remsen stakes.
“I think our racing team believes this is a generational opportunity to reinvigorate downstate racing in New York and to serve as a stage for some of the most important and best racing in the country throughout the entirety of the year, whether that be Belmont Stakes week, Breeders’ Cup week, anything in between,” Offerman said.
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