Opening Day at Belmont Park a Welcome Sight

The opening day of the spring meet at Belmont Park rarely attracts much fanfare.

It may be a harbinger of the warm, summer days ahead and an aesthetic improvement over winter racing at Aqueduct Racetrack, yet there's rarely been a huge build-up of excitement for the opening of Belmont Park. These days, that kind of festive celebration is reserved for greeting day one upstate at Saratoga Race Course.

"Normally, opening day at Belmont Park is not that big of a deal," said Joe Appelbaum, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, "because you are only moving eight miles along the Belt Parkway from Aqueduct to Belmont."

That will all change June 3.

At about 1:15 p.m. ET Wednesday, when a field of 11 maiden claimers will break from the starting gate at Belmont Park, there will be relative silence in a facility that's closed to the public. But for horsemen, jockeys, racetrack workers, and racing fans in New York, and across the country as well, there will no doubt be loud cheering and an outpouring of emotion when track announcer John Imbriale says, "They're off at Belmont Park!"

Maybe he'll say, "They're back at Belmont Park," which would be more fitting, since Wednesday's card will mark the first day of racing in New York since March 15. As New Yorkers spent the last 2 1/2 months struggling to control the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, first Aqueduct was closed more than a month early and then the opening of Belmont Park was delayed by more than a month from its scheduled April 24 launch.

"I haven't seen an opening day at Belmont Park like this in my lifetime," Appelbaum said. "We've been off from racing since mid-March and (it will be 80 days without racing). There's such a huge sense of anticipation and excitement. It's a time of rebirth and a time to exhale after a lot of rough days the last few months."

In the interim since Aqueduct was shut down, training continued at Belmont Park and the New York Racing Association worked with NYTHA and groups such as the New York Race Track Chaplaincy and Backstretch Employee Service Team to implement safety protocols to safeguard backstretch workers and keep the sport in motion. That paved the way for Wednesday's fervently awaited return of racing with a wide array of measures in place to keep all of the participants as safe as possible.

"We're back," said NYRA CEO and president David 'Rourke in succinctly expressing his feelings on the return of the sport. "There's gratitude for the work done by frontline workers, the government in Albany, the horsemen on our backside. It's a privilege that we get to be the first sport back in New York. It will be different. There will not be fans, but it's a beautiful sport and there will be expanded television coverage. I believe we'll give people a pastime; some entertainment to get through these days, which can be long."

In New York, Wednesday will bring an end to the longest period without racing since 1975, the last winter before NYRA adopted year-round racing. Back then, NYRA would go on hiatus from Christmas week or early January until the end of February or beginning of March, when opening day at the Big A was celebrated as passionately in Ozone Park as it was in the Bronx for the first baseball game of the year at Yankee Stadium.

There's a similar yet different feeling now.

"In some ways it's like the old days with the big opening day but not necessarily for the right reason," said seven-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher. "This is the first stage in re-opening and healing for a lot of people. There's a feeling of optimism that we made it through the worst of times and hopefully we can start to re-open and get racing going and then ease into times when spectators can show up. There's a lot of owners, trainers, and jockeys who are looking forward to Wednesday."

Pletcher also believes that having NYRA back on its feet is an important step for the entire racing industry after months of dealing with the pain, suffering, and loss of life caused by the pandemic.

"The racing industry needs New York to be open," Pletcher said. "New York is huge for the industry. It's an intricate part of American racing, so to be closed for a few months has been a hardship on a lot of people."

Some of the hardest hit were the small stables that race year-round at NYRA. While Pletcher, Chad Brown, and New York's other top trainers were able to derive some income from racing in Florida, trainer Ed Barker's stable of 18 horses has been limited to just training in New York. For Barker, the resumption of racing will be nirvana at a time when his finances were dwindling, even with the help of a small business PPP loan and a $16,500 prize for finishing in a tie for first in NYRA's Under 20's Claiming Challenge.

"Relieved is not the word," Barker said about the start of racing. "It was getting awful anxious, to say the least. But thank God, with the help of everyone to get the protocols in place, we got the approval to race. It's very welcomed. I probably took it on the chin for $20,000 a month in income. I am so thankful that I have good owners who paid their bills."

An opening day card with an average of 13 starters per race speaks volumes for the eagerness of horsemen to ply their trade once again in New York, and now that the cobwebs are being dusted off at Belmont Park, Barker is hopeful there will be a benefit to so many days without racing.

"If there was a silver lining to all this, it was that my horses ran hard all winter and in hindsight, this was the best thing that could have happened to them," he said. "I had a good winter and the horses got a nice rest. Now, I can tell you, they are ready to run."

The spring/summer meet at Belmont Park will run for 25 days through July 12, and will offer a stakes each day as part of a $7 million stakes program, with the first of 22 graded stakes being a blockbuster duel between the multiple graded stakes-winning turf mares Rushing Fall and Got Stormy in Wednesday's featured Beaugay Stakes (G3T). 

A memorable opening day will also include Juddmonte Farm's much heralded Hidden Scroll in an allowance race that may serve as his first start on turf. And, in a sign of times, the third race will be the debut of Fauci, a 2-year-old son of Malibu Moon  carrying the same name as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"This is what we have been waiting for," said trainer Christophe Clement, who will send out Call Me Love in the Beaugay and entered horses in six of Wednesday's 10 races. "I'm very grateful to NYRA for all the work they have done to bring racing back and now let's keep the racing department busy with entries."

As usual, Belmont Stakes Day will be the highlight of the meet. Except this year, the 152nd Belmont Stakes (G1) will be contested June 20 as the first of the three Triple Crown races for 3-year-olds. The distance of "The Test of the Champion" has also been switched from 1 1/2 miles to a more reasonable 1 1/8 miles in a unique season when most of the final round of preps were canceled or postponed until later dates. Yet O'Rourke believes the day will nevertheless provide a grand day of entertainment with four grade 1 stakes on the card.

"It will be a great day of racing," he said. "Obviously, because the season has been interrupted, (the Belmont Stakes) had to be re-formatted, and from a sports side it will have a different feel. Yet it's kinda cool, because it's unique. Everyone will have a good time, even though they can only watch on television. Do we want to do it again? No. It's a one-time thing. It should be fun to have a big day of racing back."

The Belmont Stakes will be aired on NBC, though during the meet, races can be seen on either Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, or the MSG networks through NYRA's America's Day at the Races program. Wednesday's racing, part of 127 hours of live coverage from Belmont Park, will be presented from 1 to 2:20 p.m. and 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on FS2 and from 1 to 6:30 p.m. on MSG+.

TVG will stream NYRA racing on its WatchTVG app.

The specifics of the meet are that racing will be held through Sunday this week with a 1:15 p.m. first-race post time, and the schedule will then revert to a Thursday through Sunday format until the meet closes July 12. 

The bigger picture is that racing is back home in Elmont, N.Y., and even if there's an 80% chance of afternoon rain and thunderstorms in the forecast, you can be certain that horsemen will be using a smile as their umbrella.

"It goes without saying, there's been an incredible amount of work done and lot of people had to come together to make this happen. It's reassuring to see that when the chips were down, and they are still down to a degree, people came together in a lot of respects," said Terry Finley, president and CEO of the West Point Thoroughbreds partnership. "Talking to people all over the country, this has given us a chance to find out how much we love this game and appreciate the industry. Even the grizzled vets who never seem to have a kind word to say are more reflective than they've ever been."

Reflective, ecstatic, there is no shortage of words to describe the feelings of all of the people associated with New York racing. Cavernous Belmont Park will surely look different than it ever has in its 115-year history. There will be no fans, no activity at the wagering windows, no owners in the winner's circle, an empty backyard. Instead there will be temperature checks, sanitizing stations, protective shields, and areas where social distancing will be marked off and enforced for the essential personnel in the building.

Yet at the same time, it can also be said that in the eyes of so many people, Beautiful Belmont Park will be a more beautiful sight than ever before on Wednesday afternoon.

"From nothing," Clement said, "this is a paradise."

A paradise, indeed. Welcome back, Belmont Park.