- Saratoga Race Course: 155th meet couldn’t get out from under the clouds
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The rain came down, and so did betting handle at Saratoga Race Course this summer.
After two straight seasons in which all-sources wagering broke the meet record by exceeding $800 million, Saratoga fell just short of that mark in 2023, at $799,229,288 for the 40-day meet that concluded on Monday.
There’s little doubt that the overly rainy weather, which forced 65 races scheduled for the turf courses to be moved to the main track, leading to multiple scratches and shorter fields, played a significant role.
A dark cloud of another sort hung over the 155th Saratoga meet, as two star horses running in high-profile graded stakes in front of huge crowds and a national TV audience broke down while on the verge of winning and were euthanized by injection on the track because of irreparable injuries.
The 3-year-old filly Maple Leaf Mel, owned by football Hall of Famer Bill Parcells, broke her leg two steps from the finish line in the Grade I Test on Whitney Day Aug. 5, and three weeks later the 3-year-old New York Thunder broke his leg near the sixteenth pole when it appeared that he was going to win the Grade I Allen Jerkens on Travers Day Aug. 26.
Those two deaths were part of a total of eight deaths due to incidents that occurred during the meet and represented a spike in the raw total compared to the previous five meets, according to information available to the public on the New York Gaming Commission’s Equine Breakdown, Death, Injury and Incident Database.
The horses all got home safely in the final six racing days of the meet, which was capped by a stunning upset in the Grade I Hopeful, by 54-1 Nutella Fella.
The final week was also perhaps the driest of the meet.
In 2022, when only 16 races were rained off the turf, Saratoga handle surged to $878,211,963, almost 8% more than the record number in 2021. The 2023 all-sources total was a drop of 9% from last year.
Paid admission, meanwhile, went up, to a total of 1,105,683, the eighth straight year Saratoga drew over one million, not counting 2020, when fans weren’t allowed on the grounds because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Average daily paid admission (27,642) was over 27,000 for the first time since 2019.
Four races were canceled entirely because of wet weather, leaving the total number of races at 410, 270 on dirt and 140 on turf. Average field size dropped from 7.76 in 2023 to 7.64.
Betting favorites won 34.9% of the time.
Besides Nutella Fella’s shocker in the Hopeful, the chase for the trainer championship ended in dramatic fashion on closing day, also, as Linda Race won the final race of the meet, with Lt. Mitchell, to tie Chad Brown for the award named after the late Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens with 35 winners each.
Rice’s closing-day success also included a win by Pioneering Spirit in the Bernard Baruch. She won one other training title, in 2009, while Brown has won or shared the championship six times since 2016.
Brown was by far the leading trainer based on purse earnings, with $5,487,603. Todd Pletcher was next on the list, at $4,044,056.
“It was a great meet, and I’m proud of my team,” Brown told the New York Racing Association. “The Alabama and Saratoga Derby at the top, those were huge wins. My team persevered through the weather — we had a record number of off-the-turf races and second-places, and they were still able to grind out a tie for the win, which is amazing. Hopefully, we can continue that into the fall.”
The Brown-trained Randomized won the Grade I Alabama, for decades one of the most important races for 3-year-old fillies in North America, and Program Trading won the Grade I Saratoga Derby Invitational.
Brown also won two graded stakes on the turf with the rising 3-year-old star Carl Spackler.
In the biggest race of the meet, Belmont Stakes winner Arcangelo won the 154th Travers, which marked just the fourth time since the race was first run in 1864 that three distinct winners of the Triple Crown races met in the Travers. This year’s field included Kentucky Derby winner Mage and Preakness winner National Treasure, as well as the 2022 2-year-old male champion Forte, who actually was the morning-line and betting favorite for the Grade I $1.25 million Travers.
In light of the horse deaths, the New York Racing Association is considering some additional safety measures, including installing synthetic tracks on the circuit.
“The continued success of Saratoga depends upon our ability to continuously enhance equine safety through science and technology,” O’Rourke said in a release on closing day. “In the coming months, NYRA will make significant investments in PET scan imaging to identify pre-existing injuries; finalize the path forward regarding the adoption of synthetic surfaces at each venue; and expand the use of biometric wearable devices. Horses, fans and the racing community deserve nothing less.”
O’Rourke also told Mike Kane of the Thoroughbred Daily News on Sunday that Saratoga is in the conversation for hosting next year’s Belmont Stakes.
NYRA has already expressed the desire to hold the Belmont at Saratoga in 2025 because of ongoing reconstruction of Belmont Park.
Racing resumes on the NYRA circuit on Thursday, Sept. 14 with the Belmont at the Big A meet at Aqueduct.
