Per Dave Grening on Twitter, NYRA mandating that if you ride at Saratoga starting Thursday and go to another track to ride you will not be allowed to return and ride at Saratoga. Also, if you ride at another track on Thursday, you will not be allowed to ride the entire meet at Saratoga.

Very smart IMO.

Thanks for sharing. This is a brilliant move by NYRA on many fronts to create a NYRA sandbox.

First, this edict prevents the jockeys themselves from being lured to another track (by an owner or trainer) and bringing the virus back with them. They are creating a jockey bubble effective now. Is it enough to guarantee safety? We will know over the next 14 days. I would like to see this go further and require the same for large scale trainers where if they cannot commit to NYRA safety protocols in their entirety, turn over local operations to someone who can.

Second, NYRA is signaling that it will do anything necessary to avoid a shutdown for any reason during the Saratoga meeting. Can you imagine their leaving Belmont Park behind for the Summer to go to an empty Spa in order to generate additional handle only to have the whole plan implode? This is going to be a very long 8 weeks if there is an outbreak and you can be sure that the Governor will close things down in a heartbeat.

Third, in a period where purse money is strained, this keeps the money circulating with the locals. This does avoid the west coast contingent (Baffert, Smith et al.) from coming in on big weekends to potentially scoop a big purse.

Following Indiana & NYRA's lead, Laurel & Gulfstream locking down jock colonies.

Why wouldn’t they also lockdown the trainer colony?

I just heard that 14 of 15 jockeys at Del Mar tested positive for COVID.

Trainers haven't been gallivanting around the country. They send stakes horses to venues and local trainers handle them. For instance, Pat Kelly took care of No Parole for Tom Amoss at Belmont. Kent Sweezey took care of Shippy for George Weaver the other day at MTH.

Umberto Rispoli the latest rider to test positive for Covid. He also rode the weekend of the 4th at Los Al. To his credit he has not been bouncing to different tracks though. Rumors circulating that Del Mar is canceling for at least the weekend if not longer.

Figures that the riders, who display a lack of brains daily on the track, were so careless. Hopefully they all recover and racing isn’t stopped for too long because many tracks were able to figure out how to avoid this kind of outbreak for months.

I saw closed 1 week

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https://www.drf.com/news/del-mar-can...onavirus-tests

Del Mar will not race from Friday through Sunday this weekend after a group of jockeys tested positive for the coronavirus, an official said.

https://www.drf.com/news/del-mar-can...onavirus-tests

The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club on Wednesday announced it has canceled its racing program this weekend after 15 jockeys tested positive for COVID-19.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...nceled-weekend

The great news is that for these guys (ie age group) Covid will not = Death. Bummer about DMR...but what a great jock colony at Saratoga!

Let’s hope not. Agapito Delgadillo is 54, his daughter confirmed today he has it. Even though most are young the virus is having long term impacts on people that we might not know for many years.

Just an incredibly irresponsible weekend at Los Al and I still can’t understand how this happened.