Panza Reflects on NYRA Tenure as New Chapter Awaits

For Martin Panza, it was time.

After nearly eight years as the director of racing at the largest and most complex circuit in the nation, he was ready to step down as the senior vice president of racing operations for the New York Racing Association and enjoy the financial fruits and freedom he had earned during a career in the racing industry that has spanned about 35 years.

"It's been an honor to work here with NYRA, but for me it was time to take another step in life and start another chapter," the 58-year-old Panza said. 

Panza announced in early August that he will relinquish his position at the Oct. 31 end of the Belmont Park fall meet, and though NYRA's stay at the Elmont, N.Y., track has been lengthened by a weekend to accommodate Breeders' Cup simulcast wagering, he will be sticking with his original plans.

"I'm not extending my contract," he said with a laugh.

As Panza enters the home stretch of his days at NYRA, there's a mix of emotions, starting with some melancholy feelings.

"There are a lot of people and friends I'm going to miss," Panza said, "and what I'll miss most about the job is writing and filling races. I've been doing that for 34 years and it will be interesting to see if I'll feel the same way six months from now."

Yet there's also some relief at putting behind him, at least for a while, the relentless, 24/7 pressures of a position in which he was tasked with the nearly impossible job of satisfying the needs and wishes of his bosses at NYRA, its board of directors, a steady group of at least 130 diverse trainers with more than 1,600 horses on the grounds of the organization's three tracks, horsemen's groups, jockeys, regulators, governing bodies, and a countless number of owners, breeders, and fans.

"In any barn area there will be trainers who like what you do or don't like what you do. It doesn't matter where you are. You try to treat people fairly and be consistent and try to follow the rules and bring integrity to the process. That's all anyone can do. Give everyone a fair shake," Panza said. "There are always problems and some people expect this position to solve them, but there are some problems that can't be solved. There's not an easy answer. If there was, we would have solved it."

And, suffice it to say, that list of entities with a vested interest in the sport does not stop there, with each having on a daily basis considerably more suggestions, demands, requests, and complaints than compliments. Together it's that inherent mix of pressures and excitement that are rolled into an often thankless yet highly important and visible leadership position in the racing industry that someone else will fill in the near future.

"This isn't a job for the faint-hearted," Panza said. "One of the hardest parts of this job is not only the volume of things you deal with on a daily basis, but how different they are. You are dealing with a lot of different issues, and it's like you go home at night and you are mentally exhausted. I have a lot of experience in dealing with all those issues but there were times when I would say, 'Oh my God.' There's that pile of work here. There's that pile there, and you are dealing with 15 or 16 different problems. When I worked at Hollywood Park that was not the case, but at NYRA there are a lot of different things going on when you run three racetracks year-round.

"Even when you are on vacation or you take days off, your phone is still ringing and there are still emails and texts coming in. I've been doing this a long time and, trust me, there are times when I wish I wasn't leaving but at the same time, it was time to leave."

Panza is leaving at a crucial juncture in NYRA's history. In the course of the next few years, issues such as renovation at Belmont Park, the fate of Aqueduct Racetrack, dealing with the advent of sports betting in New York State, sharing the Belmont Park complex with an arena for the NHL's New York Islanders and concerts, and rebuilding on-track attendance amidst the specter of COVID-19 are among the priorities that must be addressed.

There's also planning for the eventual return of the Breeders' Cup to New York for the first time since 2005 once renovations at Belmont Park are completed. NYRA CEO and president Dave O'Rourke said in the current edition of BloodHorse magazine that his timetable for hosting the event is between 2025-27.

"It was time for me to go and at the same time for NYRA, it's not the worst thing in the world to bring in someone new who will have fresh ideas," Panza said. "Hopefully that person will keep some of the good innovations in place. To Dave O'Rourke's credit, there's a good team in place here that does the best they can under the circumstances they face. We have a 17-person board of directors with a wealth of knowledge that has some titans of American industry who truly care about racing. That's an asset for NYRA that not many, if any, tracks have. To have them in a room trying to solve problems is a tremendous plus for NYRA and whomever takes this job to be able to pick their brains."

While Panza is quick to share the credit for improvements during his eight-year tenure, he leaves a racing operation in much better shape than it was eight years ago when NYRA was under state control and its franchise to conduct was surrounded with question marks. Daily purses are about 25% higher now. During the 2013 Saratoga Race Course meet, maiden special weight races had a purse of $80,000. They were worth 25% more at $100,000 this summer.

"I think that rather than say I'm leaving NYRA in a better spot, I'd prefer to say I left my mark," said Panza, who came to NYRA after working for 20 years at Hollywood Park and rising to the position of vice president of racing and racing secretary. "I think I strengthened NYRA in some areas and improved the quality of racing, but we had the resources to do that so the timing was right because we got the VLT machines and suddenly there was more purse money. I think we've taken a conservative approach, so the purse account is in good shape and we've certainly strengthened the brand."

Three of the main marks Panza is leaving on NYRA would be the introduction of the "Big Day" bundling of several major stakes on a single day, the creation of the Turf Triple for 3-year-old males and fillies, and the daily carding of programs based largely on races in the condition book rather than extras.

Panza was on the job less than a year when he addressed NYRA's decades-old problem of trying to attract large crowds for the Belmont Stakes (G1) in those years when a Triple Crown was not on the line.

His response was to launch the "Big Day" concept. In particular, he moved the Metropolitan Handicap (G1) from its traditional Memorial Day spot to the Belmont Stakes Day card as one of 10 stakes that afternoon, nine of them graded with six grade 1s, an unprecedented array for a non-Breeders' Cup card.

Helped by California Chrome  's thwarted 2014 Triple Crown bid, the concept was a smashing success from the outset with a crowd of 102,199 and a record total handle of a little more than $150 million. Seven years later, that figure remains NYRA's all-time best handle and even though Panza watched Triple Crown sweeps in 2015 and 2018, it was the 2014 Belmont Stakes that produced his most cherished day of racing at NYRA.

"When American Pharoah   won the Triple Crown (in 2015) I had tears in my eyes but the 2014 Belmont will always stick out to me. As a team we created something and we crushed records," Panza said. "We blew the doors off Belmont Stakes records and that told me that packaging the stakes was the right thing to do. I remember leaving the track that night and feeling it was a great accomplishment."

With imitation serving as the sincerest form of flattery, since then every major racetrack has embraced the "Big Day" concept for its most popular days of racing and Panza has geared NYRA's stakes schedule to have one of them a month at Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetrack.

"There's tradition in the game, but the game is constantly changing, and it's not always easy to create change because you open yourself up for criticism. I think the days of graded stakes every Saturday and Sunday and people coming to the races for them doesn't happen anymore. I long for that as much as any of the longtime fans, but it doesn't happen," Panza said. "The big days have been a positive, we've brought some high-powered horses here, and every year we're breaking a record at Saratoga in some fashion, so I think it's strengthened the quality of racing."

Panza launched the Turf Triple in 2019, adding a total of four new turf stakes for 3-year-olds to the existing Belmont Derby Invitational Stakes (G1T) and Belmont Oaks Invitational Stakes (G1T). The three races for males, each worth $1 million this year, matched the distances of the legs of the dirt Triple Crown. The three races for fillies were worth $700,000 each, bringing the value of the series to $5.1 million. With purses like that, the races proved to be quite popular with horsemen not only in New York, but around the world.

The Sept. 18 card at Belmont Park with the series-ending Jockey Club Derby Stakes and Jockey Club Oaks Stakes handled a total of $18 million in wagering, compared to a $11.15 million handle the following Saturday.

"I hope NYRA will continue with the Turf Triple. We've only run it in its entirety twice due to the pandemic so it's very much in its infancy, but the timing of it works," Panza said. "There was a void in turf races for 3-year-olds and NYRA had the resources to fill it and capitalize on it. Everything has to start someplace and I believe the races have generated good handles and quality fields. I'm thankful we were able to create some new events, which in today's era is not the easiest thing to do."

In his formative years as a racing executive, Panza received tutoring from Eual Wyatt at Hollywood Park, which instilled in him an appreciation for creating a functional and reliable condition book of races.

"My philosophy is write a good condition book and make it go. It allows trainers to medicate their horses for a race and owners from out-of-town to make travel plans. You're not going to make every race go, but at places like Saratoga we got pretty close to 85% or 90% when the weather was cooperating," Panza said. "I always believed the racing office should control the program and when you start writing 20 or 30 extras a day you are not controlling the program. I tried to bring that element to the organization. I learned to never be afraid. Write the book and fill your races. When you control your program and product, you build the brand. Unfortunately that concept has slipped at racetracks these days."

Aside from the rewarding elements of the job, there was also frustration on a regular basis.

"My biggest frustration was that regulators have their hands tied today compared to 30 or 40 years ago and they are probably underfunded," Panza said. "So you have a regulator who is in charge of the integrity of the game and policing the game and they are grossly underfunded. That makes it frustrating as the head of racing operations to look at that end and see that we need some help. There's a lot to police. So there have been challenges on that end in New York because by the structure of NYRA things move slowly, sometimes because we're waiting for state approval. We have to jump through hoops other tracks do not. There were things we needed to do but it took a lot of time to get it done. It's a big ship and it took time to turn it.

"You have a rule book in New York that probably needs to be rewritten. You have rules in there that are 50 or 60 years old and need to be cleaned up. The regulators have done a good job and they are capable people but I'm sure they feel frustrations as well as we do."

At the moment, Panza has yet to decide on when or where he intends to return to the work force. He's happily awaiting his first prolonged stretch of free time with no obligations hanging over his head since his college days, and he's amassed a solid enough bank account to support himself for quite a while.

Instead, he'll spend the next week and a half traveling to Del Mar as a member of the Breeders' Cup Selection Committee and then will return to New York to tidy up some loose ends and clean out his office for a final day at NYRA that comes on a date when the unusual becomes the usual.

"It will be a strange day, but I guess it should be because it's Halloween," Panza said about his Oct. 31 farewell. "The nice thing about racing and any racetrack is that no one is irreplaceable. The show will go on the next day. For me, I'm looking forward to the time off, so I'm looking forward to the 31st, but I will miss the people here, the office crew and people I have worked with for the last eight years. Dave has a good management team here that cares about racing and they care about NYRA. The way they blended the ADW (NYRA Bets) with television was brilliant and it strengthened their product. I will miss this place but the good thing is that I can always come to Saratoga and Belmont."

Of course, in the future it will be different. Instead of having a mountain of problems to solve during his next trip to the Spa, Panza can kick back and enjoy a carefree day at the races.

After all these years, it's finally time for that to happen.