Wiggle It Jiggleit won one of the most exciting Little Brown Jug finals, beating Lost for Words in an epic battle in 1:49.3 racing on the outside the entire mile, losing ground in the stretch and then coming back to nip the second place finisher at the wire.
The Meadowlands will be eliminating Thursday night racing and many if not all of the winter late closing events will be cancelled. The lost Thursday nights will be replaced with weekend racing in September.
The loss of Thursdays may strengthen the weekend cards but it also cuts expenses which is another reason the winter late closing series will be seeing the axe this year. True, these races tended to be poor wagering events which meant offering these late closing events was not a good use of money; money which can be used to support or increase the purses for overnight races.
As for trying to move legs of the Graduate Series to non-Gural tracks in addition to eliminating some 'Grand Circuit-type' races. The reason for this is supposedly due to the Meadowlands hosting the Breeders Crown this coming year and while this is true, conserving purse account funds for overnight races is a benefit of such a move. Unless slots come to the Meadowlands or business improves, one has to wonder if the Meadowlands is slowly becoming like many tracks; racing primarily overnights.
3 comments:
This makes no sense. Gural had the right idea by closing for 4 weekends when Mohawk has elims/finals for the NA Cup and then Pocono the next 2 weekends elims/finals for the Hempt/Franklin/Beale/Lynch...Top drivers are gone for 4 weekends so close down the joint and add racing days to Pace and Hambo week respectively...
My guess is we are continuing to see what happens when one state has no slots and the neighboring states do. I fear the Meadowlands could be heading towards an upgraded version of Freehold.
Gural rzces all of his tracks on the same nights (Fri-Sat). This makes NO SENSE whatsoever especially for the Upstate tracks which should definitely race on alternate days. Obviously he is intersted in nothing but slots/casino money and couldnt care much about the sport of harness racing as he purports to love. Two night a week racing is NOT going to make horseplayers out of people and this "not your father's racetrack" theme hasn't brought in a single new harness racing fan - not ONE. The Hambletonian attendance this year attests to this as anyone who was actually at the racetrack that day saw that only about 8000 people witnessed the event on an absolutely beautiful day. Keep alienating the true racing fans Jeff, you're doing a great job!
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