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Saratoga: Main Track Opens For Training April 17, Oklahoma Opens In May After Renovations

The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) today announced that Saratoga Race Course will open for spring training at 6 a.m. on Saturday, April 17. The barn area at the Oklahoma Training Track will open to horsemen on Thursday, April 15.

To accommodate the completion of a major renovation of the Oklahoma Training Track facility, training will begin on the main track at Saratoga Race Course.

When training resumes at the Oklahoma in early May, horses and riders will be met with a completely reconstructed track featuring a limestone base, renovated surface layer and modernized drainage systems. In addition, the training track has been widened by 10-14 feet in most areas to address the increasing population of horses training over the Oklahoma annually from April-October.

Additionally, to enhance safety for exercise riders and jockeys, the inner rail at the Oklahoma has been replaced with a rider protection system designed by Horsemen's Track and Equipment.

“The Oklahoma Training Track renovation is an investment in the future of Saratoga Race Course that reflects NYRA's commitment to providing our athletes with the safest possible environment for training and racing,” said Glen Kozak, NYRA Senior Vice President for Operations and Capital Projects. “The Oklahoma is a special place in our sport, and these improvements will serve horses, riders and the racing community well for many decades to come.”

The renovation of the Oklahoma Training Track was modeled after the work that was done to the Saratoga main track in 2020, which was universally supported by horsemen and riders. Just like at the Oklahoma, the main track renovation involved general improvements to the base and surface of the track, as well as a complete overhaul of the drainage system and installation of a new rider safety rail.

“Track surfaces at Saratoga need to stand up to a wide variety of weather conditions, including incredibly intense storms that can hit with almost no warning,” Kozak continued. “The main track can now recover from these weather events much more quickly while retaining consistency from day to day. We are confident the result will be just as positive on the Oklahoma as we have seen on the main track.”

Dr. Mick Peterson and the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory (RSTL) served as consultants on the Oklahoma renovation, performing regular testing of the quality and composition of the new surface. Prior to the re-opening of the training track, Dr. Peterson and the RSTL team will perform final inspections utilizing ground penetrating radar and the Biomechanical Surface Tester, which replicates loads and speed of a thoroughbred's leading forelimb at gallop.

“NYRA prioritizes the scientific analysis and continuous data collection that have proven to result in consistent racing surfaces,” Dr. Peterson said. “It's a privilege to work on these types of transformative projects with the world class NYRA team led by Glen Kozak.”

The team assembled by NYRA to contribute expertise to the renovation included GRW, the architectural and engineering firm based in Lexington with deep experience in racetrack design. Michael Depew, a soil scientist and agronomist, provided additional consulting services.

In consultation with the New York State Gaming Commission as well as state and local public health officials, NYRA will maintain a number of health and safety protocols implemented at all NYRA properties to mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19 and reduce risk for employees, horsemen, backstretch workers and the community. Facial coverings and social distancing are mandatory at all times at Saratoga Race Course.

Beginning on April 17, personnel working in support of training activities must provide a negative COVID-19 test or proof of full vaccination in order to access the property. This applies to both local personnel as well as those arriving from other regions. All personnel will be subject to a daily temperature check prior to entering the property.

According to current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance, individuals are considered fully vaccinated 14 days or more after receiving the second dose in a two dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), or 14 days or more after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson & Johnson / Janssen). NYRA will adhere to the current CDC guidance regarding COVID-19 vaccination standards. Testing and vaccination requirements are subject to change, and will be adjusted accordingly as New York State and CDC guidance evolves.

The 40-day summer meet at historic Saratoga Race Course, which will feature 76 stakes worth $21.5 million in total purses, will open on Thursday, July 15, and conclude on Monday, September 6. For additional information, visit NYRA.com.

New York State COVID-19 protocols do not currently allow for spectators at racetracks. As such, NYRA is working closely with New York State to secure the requisite approvals to welcome fans back to Belmont Park this spring and to Saratoga Race Course this summer.

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Saratoga Faith’s House Is Michael Dubb’s Latest Effort To Benefit Backstretch Families

For Michael Dubb, few experiences in racing compare to the satisfaction of joining another of his horses in the winner's circle after a stakes win at Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont Park or Saratoga Race Course.

But that doesn't begin to match the feeling that Dubb, a thoroughbred owner and Long Island developer, derives from his real calling at the track: putting together daycare centers that benefit the children of backstretch workers.

“There isn't anything I'd trade in racing for the smiles and success that our daycare center at Belmont Park has had with children who have passed through its doors with a firm foundation under them,” said Dubb, who serves as a New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) board member and is the founder and chairman of the Belmont Child Care Association (BCCA). “That's why we're so proud of what we're doing in Saratoga, which will continue to improve the lives of backstretch families.”

Dubb refers to the scheduled opening this summer of BCCA's new childcare center for the backstretch community at Saratoga Race Course. The 4,300-square-foot facility going up inside Gate 16, a furlong or two from the Oklahoma training track, is being funded by Dubb and his wife, Lee. It will be called Faith's House in honor of Mr. Dubb's late mother, Faith; and completes the circle of having child care during the summer meet at Saratoga and year-round at Anna House.

The Saratoga facility will provide child care and early education programs for infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children of backstretch workers, and the children of trainers and front-side NYRA employees. Faith's House will complement BCCA's sister childcare center Anna House, which Dubb built and opened in 2003 for families of the Belmont Park backstretch.

“All working parents deserve to know that their children are being cared for in a safe, healthy and enriching environment during the workday,” said Dubb. “We are thrilled to extend this important program to the hardworking families of the Saratoga backstretch community, who provide a vital service to the racing community.”

The anticipated summer opening coincides with the annual summer meet at Saratoga Race Course, which brings approximately 950 backstretch workers and their families to the Spa. The opening of the new center is contingent upon licensing approval from New York State and the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

Dubb's passion for the track kicked in early. In 1973 at the age of 17, he was a self-described “misfit,” a recent high school graduate who spent much of that summer shuttling back and forth to Saratoga Race Course in the van he used for his landscaping business. At night, he and his friends slept on the floor of the van to save a few dollars.

In the mid-1980s, Dubb worked with a bank, which was using his landscaping service, to finance the development of some lots in East Meadow, Long Island. He became a builder and business grew rapidly. Today, Dubb's Beechwood Organization ranks at the forefront of privately-owned residential homebuilders nationwide. Since 1985, Dubb, now working with his son Steven, has built more than 7,500 homes in 60 communities across the New York metro area with new ones on the map in New York City, Long Island and Saratoga.

Dubb credits retired Hall of Fame rider Jerry Bailey, who he knows from playing tennis, with generating the idea of creating a facility at Belmont Park where the children of backstretch workers could go while many of their parents were at the track, often working long hours. Meeting with NYRA officials, Dubb secured the land, an acre just inside Gate 6, and funded a large portion of the building of Anna House, which he named for the daughter of racehorse owner and generous donor Eugene Melnyk.

It was around then that Dubb also became an owner. Though Dubb calls owning racehorses a hobby, he devotes time most evenings to his stable with the same commitment and attention to detail that he uses in running his business. “I look at each horse I own as an individual investment,” he said. “But I look at all the horses I own as a stock portfolio. Underperformers are moved along and there is a constant push to upgrade the portfolio.”

That philosophy has paid off handsomely. The winner of seven year-end NYRA owner titles, Dubb has campaigned some memorable horses, including Eclipse Award-winners Monomoy Girl, British Idiom and Uni. Another of Dubb's horses to wear his stable colors of yellow with a pink rose and pink cap was Condo Commando, winner at Saratoga of the 2014 Spinaway, the final race called by Tom Durkin.

It's at Saratoga where the Dubbs and the BCCA team look forward to cutting the ceremonial ribbon at Faith's House.
“This new facility fulfills a dream that the BCCA has been working on for over 10 years,” said BCCA President Libby Imperio. “We are so excited to bring a winning formula in child care to Saratoga and forever grateful to Michael and Lee for their leadership in making it happen.”

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Supporting families who support New York Thoroughbred Racing

by Michael Dubb.

Editor's note: The following letter appeared in the March 28, 2021 print editions of the Saratogian and Troy Record, and is reprinted here with their permission.

While the pandemic irrevocably changed each and every one of us, perhaps no one will be impacted more significantly in the long term than our children.
Mental health and education experts are just starting to reckon with the fallout of this unprecedented “lost year”, which resulted in remote learning and isolation from friends and extended family.

Most experts agree, however, that kids fell behind academically: some estimates say they possibly lost up to four months of learning. We also know that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted lower-income minority families by potentially pushing more people into poverty and exacerbating long-standing disparities in health care and education.

That's why it's more important than ever that we support and assist members of these vulnerable communities – especially children – so they can fully participate in and benefit from the post-COVID recovery effort.

Faith's House at Saratoga | BCCA

That is the goal behind Faith's House, a new childcare center that will serve families and children of Saratoga Race Course's backstretch community. Scheduled to open this summer, the 4,300-square-foot facility will offer childcare and early education programs for 35 to 40 infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Faith's House will serve as a compliment to Anna House, which has been providing similar services to the backstretch families at Belmont Park on Long Island for the past two decades.

As chair of the nonprofit Belmont Child Care Association (BCCA) alongside our president, Libby Imperio; our executive director, Joanne Adams; and our great Board of Directors; it has been our honor and privilege to facilitate quality early education opportunities for the children of the backstretch community, whose members are the heart and soul of horse racing and without whom the industry would – quite literally – not be able to run.

More than 1,000 children have participated in Anna House's programs since its opening in 2003. Many of the parents of these children are first-generation immigrants who are doing exactly what my immigrant grandparents did: Working very hard to create a better life for themselves and their families.

Anna House helps support those efforts by providing these children with an educational foundation that sets them up for a lifetime of success. Soon Faith's House will do the same.

Numerous studies have underscored the importance and benefits of early childhood education programs – particularly when it comes to preventing or even minimizing school readiness gaps between low-income kids and those lucky enough to have more economic advantages. In addition, children who participate in the kinds of programs offered at Anna House – and soon at Faith's House as well – are typically at the top of their class when they start public school and are also more likely to graduate from high school, and less likely to struggle with substance abuse.

The backstretch community is a tight-knit ecosystem supported not only by BCCA but a host of other nonprofit organizations and individuals who work to make sure that the men and women of thoroughbred racing and their families have the services they need to succeed. Our collective resolve has been sorely tested over the past year by the many challenges imposed by the pandemic. But together we pulled through, putting programs and protocols in place that enabled racing to safely resume – albeit without fans in the stands – and protected the thousands of good-paying jobs in and around the racing industry statewide.

Thoroughbred racing contributes $3 billion in economic impact annually to the state – more than $200 million of which is generated in the Saratoga Springs region in connection with the historic Saratoga Race Course. This year, the opening of Faith's House will coincide with the annual summer meet in the Spa City.

This will be the culmination of a decade of hard work by BCCA and its allies and supporters, and I look forward to watching Faith's House help backstretch families fulfill their dreams while playing a key role in New York's economic recovery effort.

Michael Dubb is a builder and thoroughbred owner who chairs the Belmont Child Care Association (BCCA) sits on the NYRA Board. He built and donated both Anna House and Faith House.

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Q and A on the New NYRA Fox Sports Deal

After the big announcement Thursday on a 10-year deal between NYRA and Fox Sports that will see the t.v. giant acquire 25% of NYRA Bets, TDN Publisher Sue Finley talked to Michael Mulvihill, FOX Sports's Executive Vice President, Head of Strategy and Analytics, and to Tony Allevato, the President of NYRA Bets.

TDN: Tony, when you did this deal with Fox in 2019, a lot of people doubted that it was the right move, and argued that people would struggle to find horse racing on t.v. That hasn't been the case.

TA: This is the third stage to this deal. The first stage was in 2016, when we showed 80 hours from Saratoga. In 2019, we chose to take Belmont races and Saratoga races and make them exclusive on Fox. There was obviously a lot of risk associated with that. It played out very well. People obviously found the network and were able to watch the races. We've seen it in our handle numbers, and in our viewership numbers. So, there's no doubt in our mind, the transition worked. For us, it was important to really be able to be about controlling the narrative, and the way our content was distributed. We're about telling stories about horse racing, and helping the sport grow. Horse welfare, the jockeys, ownership, those are things that are really important to us and Fox agrees with that approach in the television programs, and I think it has played out pretty well.

MM: We love the partnership. I don't think we could ask for a better relationship than what we have with NYRA. We're really excited by the growth that we've already seen for NYRA Bets and ADW wagering in general.
MM: I think what we're trying to provide is a kind of a blueprint for the future of sports on t.v., not to be too grand about it. But everybody now is considering how are we going to use the content to drive betting activity as sports wagering becomes legal, and we're already doing it. And so far, I think it's working well.

TDN: Tony, can you put into words how important this is to helping horse racing to get back into the mainstream?

TA: As someone who has worked in horse racing for over three decades now, I look at all the missed opportunities that horse racing has had over the last few decades, going back 50 years-plus. Some of it was self-inflicted, some of it was out of our control, but we have had missed opportunities. Right now, with sports betting being legalized all over the country, and a greater acceptance of gambling in general in the United States, we have what could be a tremendous opportunity, or something that could hurt horse racing. We believe if we handle this correctly, it could be the best opportunity for horse racing in the last 50 years. There has never been a sport that has been hurt by being on television, and there's no reason to think that horse racing would be the first one. By being on television as many hours as we're going to be for the next 10 years, at a time when sports betting is sweeping across the country, we believe it will have both a short- and a long-term benefit for us. It's important to mention that NYRA is a not-for-profit, so for us, this is truly a long game, and something that we are fully invested in. We look at this as a deal that will benefit not just our business, but the sport in general. And, by giving Fox some skin in the game by having them own a piece of NYRA Bets, it incentivizes them to give us as much promotion and distribute us to as many eyeballs as possible. And that's the difference, to me, between this deal and other deals that have been done in the past. They are tied into the wagering component now.

TDN: Mike, how important was the NYRA Bets aspect of this to Fox? That you had some skin in the game as Tony said?

MM: Extremely important. It was paramount. We are undergoing an evolution from being exclusively a media content company to now increasing to being a content and gaming company, and this is a really important part of that. You see that on several fronts. There's this deal, there are very significant gaming elements in our new NFL rights deal that we announced last week. We're doing gaming content every day on FS1. I feel like in a number of ways, we're either creating content that supports a gaming business, or doing deals in which media rights and wagering are really intertwined in ways that they never

have been before. So the opportunity to get in this on a wagering level was extremely important. Where this leaves us now is that we're the only media company that has an ownership position in a sports betting business, a racing betting business, and an online poker and casino business. I think that's a pretty great place for us to be, and we can leverage our t.v. assets to build all of those wagering interests. So it was the main driver of the deal.

TDN: What does this mean for NYRA Bets holders, and for Fox Bets account holders?

TA: Fox Bets is completely separate from this deal. The two are not connected. Our deal is with Fox Sports. There's always a possibility that down the road, if horse racing is going to be incorporated into sports betting apps, which we hope will happen, that NYRA Bets will be a provider of that product. But the way we look at it, if horse racing is on 700 hours, and people are watching and betting, the money is going into the pools, and it's going to benefit the racetracks and the purses.

TDN: Can you see any further synergies?

MM: Yes, but it's a little bit early to speculate. Tony is correct in that they are complimentary and separate brands, but there obviously are logical ways in which they could be connected and they could appeal to the same kind of player. So, I wouldn't rule out that kind of thinking in the future, but we just did this deal and it's a little bit early to be contemplating those ideas.

TDN: How might this change the TV presentation, and will we notice it as viewers?

TA: We always try to walk the fine line with the gambling product as well as the story telling, which is not always easy. We try to simplify the show so that the casual sports fan can understand it, but we don't want to alienate the core customer. Talent has done a terrific job of recognizing that. The long answer is yes, you're going to see more contests, more handicapping contests, more free-to- play contests.

TDN: Tony talked about controlling the narrative, telling stories, and highlighting horse welfare. Horse racing has been through some tough times in the past couple of years. What is it about the sport-beyond the gambling aspects we have already discussed-that appealed to Fox?

MM: That's a really interesting question. I think that as we do develop this gaming business, we don't want that business to be just about the money and the math and the numbers. For these businesses to appeal to a general sports audience, they have to be soulful, and they have to have the elements that horse racing has–the grandeur of the animals themselves, and the excitement of a day at the racetrack, and we don't want it to be just like betting on a roulette wheel. There is real heart and character to horse racing that is unique and makes it more than just a betting business. And I think that Tony and his crew, in our five summers of doing races together, they do a great job as not just presenting it as a wagering opportunity, but as a really fun and unique sport. Whether that's highlighting some of the aftercare initiatives that are out there, or just telling the story about horses and riders and trainers, we want to make sure we're telling the story about the sport, and not just telling the story about the betting.

I think there's a good mix of perspectives. Somebody like Jon Kinchen who did make his name as a pure handicapper, he's got a great analytical way of thinking about the horses, and so does Andy Serling. But Acacia (Courtney) obviously, is really committed to aftercare. You're not going to encounter anyone who cares more about the horses themselves than Richie (Migliore), or Gary (Stevens), for that matter. I think it's a nice balance of people who got into it for the betting, and those for the love of the horse.

TDN: Mike, Fox has an app called the Fox Super Six which offers weekly contents. Is that something that could be applied to racing?

MM: The Fox Super Six is free-to-play; we do it every week in the NFL and do it every week in college football. We could potentially do a Fox Super Six on big NYRA stakes days, Travers day would be logical because of the Fox broadcast. So it is something that we talked about, but we have to develop the idea a little further. But we like using that free-to-play game with any programming that is a priority to us, so it would make a lot of sense.

TA: We feel like by being partnered with Fox, this gives us the best opportunity to capture new fans or lapsed fans. From what we're seeing, just from the results from the pandemic, we acquired a lot of new customers during the pandemic. We can tell from the way they bet that they were not regular players. They were more casual fans. And those customers to this point have proven to very sticky. They're still playing and they're still watching, which is a very positive sign for us and which bodes well for the future.

TDN: What other things might you have in the works together?

TA: I think that, from a television standpoint, we're looking to bring more international racing into the U.S. and distribute it on a bigger platform. So, we've already had people reached out to us from overseas, just seeing the press release, to see how they can get more involved, which is a positive. We're always looking to do more. We've had some great partners jump on board, Churchill Downs, Oaklawn, to name a couple, who have been part of the shows. I think that there are other people in the industry who see the value that television brings with sport and they have embraced it.

TDN: What does this mean for the Belmont?

TA: We have a great relationship with NBC. They have the rights for the Belmont, and we are locked in with NBC.

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