The Calendar
Bob Ehalt on tinkering with the Triple Crown schedule:
Moving the Belmont Stakes to July will not help NYRA. If anything it will turn June into a dead spot on the NYRA calendar and force it to conduct its biggest race of the year during a period of time most people in the New York-area associate with beaches and vacations.
Yes. Also — and this is something I haven’t seen addressed elsewhere — how would running the Belmont Stakes and its traditional undercard races on the first weekend in July affect Saratoga stakes, especially the Travers? Move the Belmont, and the glamour division loses its annual 11-week freshening.
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I’m going to keep this short, because otherwise I’ll get all gushy and emotional — today marks the 10th anniversary of Railbird. I couldn’t have imagined the adventures and friendships that would emerge from that first impulse a decade ago to start blogging about horse racing, and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who’s visited or followed this site since, or to everyone I’ve had the pleasure of meeting or working with because of it. Thank you.
