Don't worry, there are horses racing at Belmont tomorrow.
 

Just not today...6 per race for the first 8 races.

Exactly where do you believe the blame lies for the lack of entries?

**expecting an answer with D Wayne Lukas' name in there somewhere**

Pretty decent prices on the board.

You ain't lying. Egg on my face...again.

The lack of entries isn't NYRA's fault, but given that situation, it is reasonable to question why there are 11 races carded for Saturday and 10 races for Sunday.

Granted I'm the original Pollyanna on topics like this, but the hand-wringing over field size is a lot of windmill-tilting. And given how good the overall action has been at Belmont (specifically) this spring, utterly misplaced. There's up and down days everywhere in regards to field size and you just have to pick your spots and play where you see opportunity. And frankly, some well-placed smaller field races mixed in to an otherwise challenging sequence with fuller fields can be welcome to multi-race players.

Hollywood has small fields for the early races most days and yet the P5 continues to pay exceptionally well generally. To wit...

THURSDAY: Fields of 5-7-9-8-6, P5 pays $1,768
FRIDAY: Fields of 6-7-6-6-5, P5 pays $1,078
SATURDAY: Fields of 6-7-5-8-7, P5 pays $346
SUNDAY: Fields of 5-7-5-8-9, P5 pays $4,762
THURSDAY: Fields of 5-6-6-8-8, P5 pays $94

look at the garbage at gulfstream Monday..talk about killing a brand name..:zz:

I couldn't even find the Gulfstream entries, but they have to be better than the Tampa ones..... Oy Vey! :zz:

I don't know what is sadder - this card, or the fact that I'm still going ;)

I just figured that you were going for one of those fugazi Cuban sandwiches.............

Say hello to Exacta Bob for me (I'm sure he will be present).

No Bob - he's one of the smart ones that gets the hell out of here for the summer.

They might literally be putting this on for just me and Bigs - I'll post pics

i heard z russians dominate these type of 2-day meets.....OLGA!!!!!!


-bt-

Seriously, the Russians would be like Pletcher & JV compared to the rest of the group that's assembled down there.

I'm interested to know why you feel this way

There are plenty of things to question about the manner in which the NYRA racing office does things, but I think it's hard to blame them for the annual pre-Saratoga lull. It's compounded when there has essentially been no 2YO racing to bolster the program, and there are several barns with dozens of horses at the Oklahoma hardly running (same for a California transplant granted thirty stalls at Belmont).

Against this backdrop, carding an extra race a day (and this continued on Wednesday) makes little sense.

Shirreffs rarely runs his horses, everyone knew that going in.