BAQ..... now there is one job that can be eliminted entirely.
I bet the moron who times the races came up with it! :lol:

I get it, I was just passing along one convo I had back when.

Was listening to Chuck Simon/Barry Spears "Going In Circles" podcast last night, and Chuck mentioned something about when they finally do go ahead and do a rebuild of the Belmont Park grandstand, "everybody knows" they're putting it on the opposite side of the track, like they did with the Meadowlands.

I had not heard anything like this, and it sounded different from what thought I had heard proposed (which sounded more like a Gulfstream type setup complementing the arena).

I do remember reading things years ago which said the direction the current grandstand faces is definitely not ideal, but that was all I can remember.

I can't be that simple with the way the chutes are constructed currently. The Meadowlands, sure, standard one mile track that is only used for harness racing now.

The Belmont grandstand faces north. From recall reading racing pubs, I believe this created an issue (or is presumed to create an issue) with the track consistency in fall/winter because the current grandstand would keep the stretch in shadows while the backside would get sun. I did a quick search and found this from mainstream news https://www.liherald.com/stories/nyr...nt-park,131399 from March 2021.

Seems more likely option would be to reduce the grandstand size sufficiently to at least mitigate the issue, and retain the current racing layout, with an added all weather track inside the inner turf, which I believe is a little longer than 1 1/8 miles.

I was driving to visit one of my church members in the ICU when I heard them say it. So my focus was a little elsewhere - maybe they were just joking about the kind of stuff they'd heard around the track in conjunction with the move of meet announcement.

Glad you brought up the chutes on turf - makes it much less plausible. You'd have to rip out a LOT of nice hedges to move the turns on those courses.

Also Club Med has both 6F and 1 1/4 mile chutes like Monmouth has. The t’bred horsemen still have rights to fall dates there, but haven’t opted to use them save for the short turf only meet. Costs too much $ to turn over the dirt track combined w low horse inventory make a longer meet not financially viable I suppose.

Yeah, I don't see how you could do it without shrinking or drastically reconfiguring the track, and I doubt NYRA has any interest in doing that. Belmont's configuration is part of its branding.

Just throw in a Wilson chute and it'll be ok.
It worked good at Toga, in fact, t was better than the 1m8 races.

Went and downloaded again and listened to this part again. I was mistaken in saying this was the part where they said "everybody knows." The quote regarding the track was "Nobody really talks about it in public too much, but they're building a tunnel on the backside, what's currently the backside of Belmont Park, on the backstretch - that's not a random occurrence. They're gonna rebuild the grandstand on the other side of the racetrack like the Meadowlands did. That's gonna happen."

Just went back and looked at the pic that classhandicapper posted when construction started - where all the work appears to be happening (in line with what I understood before hearing this) is closer to the NW end of the current grandstand.

I'm looking forward to seeing what's ultimately proposed/ultimately happens. I know I need to get out to Belmont this coming spring to see the grand old lady as she is one more time.

One topic I do vaguely recall is the notion of 2 structures. One for the cooler months and one for the warmer months. I also recall some speculation that the training track would serve as the racing surface in winter with a smaller structure there, but I couldn't find any evidence of these thoughts being officially considered. An interview w/O'Rourke published 12/28/20 in DRF https://www.drf.com/news/orourke-con...ark-grandstand did not mention either and mentioned only a vision of a grandstand that is 1/3 size of the current one. More recent pieces, a sample of which is https://www.drf.com/news/belmont-fal...ovations-begin also make no mention.

In making any decision about the size/shape/position of any revisions to the Belmont grandstand, a very serious consideration is the expected level of success and the synergies generated by the UBS Arena and the drive to make Belmont an entertainment destination.

For example, is a racing afternoon followed by a concert a real pull? I can remember Sundays in the Belmont backyard where a named performer would draw 45,000+ for the second half of the card.

Is racing followed by a hockey game a realistic idea in October, April, and May?

Can a planned dining community be constructed to allow thousands to enjoy dinner after the races?

Each is an incredibly challenging proposition without a special local identity (a la Saratoga), a cultural leader (a la Marylou Whitney), or a complete (sports) raison d'etre.

My hope is that somehow Belmont again emerges from behind the curtain to become the "Spring and Autumn" place to be. We need to realize that the marketing of such would be very Long Island and New York City centric which makes the entire experience very different from Saratoga.

In many ways, the Belmont construction concept leaves me uneasy. Although before my time, there is an element here of the old Jamaica Racetrack's demise in 1959 after the Aqueduct's reconstruction.

It's quite similar, since the line of conversation (emanating from David O'Rourke and others) is towards the consolidation of all the downstate racing at Belmont once the rebuild is done.

Could see a slight expansion of Saratoga meet (to include all of July), and a few more intentional breaks (10-17 days) like the one they're taking right now built in when all is said and done.

https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-rac...w-belmont-park

emphasis mine

Does that imply the demise of Aqueduct?