Tuesday, July 27, 2010

40 Day Spa Meet-Around the Horn 4 days In

After 4 days of racing, I thought it would be interesting to see what people in the know are saying about the first week of the expanded 40 day meet at Saratoga.

NYRA has declared the first week a success, boasting that it outperformed the final weekend of racing at Belmont in 2009. This is an apples and orange comparison if there ever was one, and the comparison by NYRA really seems silly.

NYRA did report that attendance and handle met expectations with an average of 18,113 fans and a little over 2.5 million in daily on track handle. Considering 2 of the 4 days were pretty awful weather wise- the all day rain for the Opener and the oppressive humidity on Saturday, I think the attendance and handle figures are good numbers.

Fellow TBA Blogger Steve Zorn has a fact filled post up comparing all the numbers for the Spa weekend 1 vs. Monmouth Weekend.

Steve Crist
of the DRF is happy so far stating:
"It looks like opening up a few days early was a good idea, and it is hard not to be optimistic about the 36 days of racing still ahead."


Even Paul Moran, the Debbie Downer of racing writers, seems happy about the first 4 days in his ESPN website column, describing the meet thus far as :
"So far, so good."

1 comment:

The_Knight_Sky said...

Ha. I used to read Debbie Downer's blog. Too bad he gave it up, he told it like it is.

...strange material found nowhere in nature protruding from a faux main track