We’ve got just a few things to do before the 25th, said Charlie Wheeler with a smile as he led media on a tour of the Saratoga Race Course.
Some of those `few things` include tending to the track’s 60,000 flowers, sealing the mile-and-an-eighth main oval track and generally getting things spit-and-polished for the season’s hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Thoroughbred horse racing returns to Saratoga on Wednesday, July 25, for a 36-day meet that ends Labor Day, Sept. 3. Wheeler and Charles Hayward, NYRA president and chief executive officer, took members of the media on a tour of the preparation that goes into the meet as well as the $1.2 million in facilities improvements on Monday, July 9.
Long-distance betting
For the first time ever, betting terminals will be available in the clubhouse’s fourth-floor restaurant.
To the right of the track’s Union Avenue entrance is an area that will be used for betting on English races. Something that NYRA is trying out new for this meet is `Breakfast with the Brits,` where bettors can wager on simulcast races from England.
Saratoga Race Course patrons will be able to pay their $3 general admission starting just after 7 a.m. to enter a tent area near the track’s front gate and bet on races from places like Catterick, Sandown, Thirsk, York, Newmarket, Goodwood, Nottingham and Haydock. There will be no re-entry fees for these patrons after the breakfast crowd is swept out. Hayward said he did not know what type of identification system track officials would use for the British simulcast bettors, possibly a bracelet.
`We don’t expect to make a lot of money on it,` said Hayward, but he added that there is enough interest among bettors, fans and horsemen to provide the experience.
Copper tops and more
An example of the improvements at the track is a new copper roof. New decking under the copper has been installed on the lower clubhouse roof at a cost of $260,000.
A new, highly polished natural wood floor and new sub flooring have been installed on the lower clubhouse at a cost of $111,000.
On the Oklahoma side of the track complex, five old barns, which were built in the 1880s, were restored. They were jacked up two feet, leveled off and restored with Adirondack sawmill lumber, the way they would have been in the 19th century, said union carpenter foreman Bill Winslow, who oversaw the work.
Roughly $280,000 was spent on renovating the barns, which house 90, 9-feet-by-13-feet stalls. Because horses stay at the track until late November and return in May, Winslow said there was only about a five-month window to perform the work. They hardly needed that long ` Winslow said crews began the work in early March and finished May 10.
Also on the Oklahoma side, Wheeler is trying out a new surface material for six of the barns’ many wash stands, where the horses are bathed. Following an edict from the Department of Environmental Conservation to keep wash and rain water separate, and wanting to give the horses the most comfortable surface to bathe on, Wheeler is experimenting with a substance called Flex-Pave. The material is a recycled rubber and paving material mix that has more give than stone or concrete. The cost is $1,000 per wash station.
Take the shuttle
Raymond Melleady, Capital District Transportation Association executive director, said the CDTA has added new shuttle routes from Broadway in downtown Saratoga Springs to both the racecourse on Union Avenue and Saratoga Gaming and Raceway on Crescent Avenue.
The base fare for such a ride is $1 for adults and 50 cents for senior citizens and people with disabilities.“