Report: Saratoga summer may start a week early in 2025

Photo:

NYRA / Coglianese Photo

The New York Racing Association pushed Saratoga’s opening
day up a week in 2019. It reportedly is on the verge of doing it again next
year.

In an interview with Daily Racing Form’s David
Grening, NYRA CEO and president David O’Rourke said an additional five or six
days of racing starting July 3 or 4 are “on the table” for 2025. Those dates
would be transferred  from the Belmont at
Big A meet at Aqueduct.

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“It’s being looked at,” O’Rourke told DRF. “We still
have to put that out in front of the racing committee.”

The current 40-day meet was established in 2010 on a six-days-a-week
schedule, Wednesday-Monday, beginning in the second half of July. That went
unchanged through 2018. In 2019 the 40 days were reconfigured into a five-days-a-week
format running Wednesday-Sunday, and the summer season was moved up to start the
first half of the July.

Closing day has been anchored on Labor Day since 1996.

Saratoga offered a preview week of sorts this year when the
Belmont Stakes was moved there because of the $455 million renovation of Belmont
Park. O’Rourke told DRF the racing festival that ran Thursday-Sunday,
June 6-9, this year could be extended to Wednesday-Sunday, June 4-8, in 2025.

If construction goes as planned, the Belmont Stakes is
scheduled to return to Belmont Park in 2026.

Asked if NYRA considered racing at Saratoga without any
break between next year’s Belmont Stakes and the proposed July 3 or 4 start of
the summer season, O’Rourke said that “is not on the table.” In between, then, NYRA
will continue to run races at Aqueduct.