Closing Weekend at Woodbine - What will 2013 look like?

[Race Promoter]

Woodbine closes their thoroughbred season this weekend. Some good races on tap including the Valedictorian, but the bigger question is what will 2013 look like? Some trainers are already looking to move to New York and the season will be shorter, but the track will still be top notch and I won't be able to give up the turf racing there. Hoping for the best!

[mannyberrios]

I'm sure that next year will be just as good as this year, and every other year.

[RXB]

There will be some adjustments due to the new realities of not being able to feed like pigs at the slots trough. Purses will have to fall quite a bit, so I imagine that some of the satellite stables of out-of-towners like Asmussen might disappear but the locals will mostly stay.

The first thing they should do is halve the $1 million purse of the Queen's Plate (and the 500k Woodbine Oaks, for that matter). There's no good reason to put up that kind of money for races restricted to Canadian-breds. A $500,000 purse for the Plate and $250,000-$300,000 for the Oaks would still be far better than what almost any of them could ever possibly hope to win against open competition so it's not as though the connections are going to run their Ont-bred horses elsewhere instead.

[Some_One]

I agree RXB, I just hope they don't touch the turf programme as I think it has been proven by now as one of the best series of turf races in North America.

[appistappis]

the major changes might not happen until the 2014 season while the gov't contunues to do everything they can to mess things up. Ft erie is probably finished as well as most of the smaller harness tracks will be forced to close like windsor did. Rumour is ajax downs will pick up maybe 30 days of thoroughbred to replace ft erie.

[Al Gobbi]

A perfect schedule for Woodbine is about a 100 day meet starting in April and going through mid November with no racing from mid-July until Labour Day Weekend. Handle, field size are smaller during that period, there are really no big open races at WO during that time and it would actually make for two nice meets (a spring/summer and a fall meet).