and in other breaking news, the Brockton Fair will be installing a 3 furlong turf course inside it's main oval, in order to attract fuller fields and offer better quality racing
We can never forget on the high quality $1500 claimers that used to grace the turf at Waterford Park! If there was no turf course, the track would have disappeared! But with a turf course, they were able to attract full fields, better horses, and become one of the finest tracks in the nation LOL.
Finger Lakes is what it is. If not for racino subsidies they would be racing for 4k a race. And racing them on turf, dirt, down pillows or roast beef sandwiches, its the same horses, really slow NY breds.
Yes, there may be a few extremely cheap turf specialists that would be able to race there that currently ship out, but there is no way the track would be spending their own money to do this.
Consider Massachusetts. There would be no interest in building a racetrack, even with the funds available for purses, if the proposing entity had to build the track with it's own money. All plans seem to revolve on one plan or another to use OPM to get the track built. Then with the purse money available, it doesn't even matter if anyone bets on the product.
I have absolutely nothing against Finger Lakes, and I know the breeding industry in NY will suffer greatly if it disappeared, mainly because it seems that 95% of NY breds cannot compete unless running against their homebred brethren.
But to pretend this will lead to a renaissance in upstate NY racing, well, probably not.
