A great day for the sport.

[MaTH716]

Yesterday was my first Belmont and while I was hoping to see history, I still had a very enjoyable time (despite maybe my worst day ever at the windows). It was crowded, but bearable. I thought that NYRA did a very good job. There were plenty of buses from the parking lot, plenty of tellers and opportunites to get food and drink all over the place. I don't recall waiting on line for anything yesterday. The only lines that I did see were from the woman's room and the ATM (which was literally 100 deep). No sure how I would have fared if the other 40k showed up, but I would have grinned and beared it. I'm not that keen on big crowds, but I wouldn't hesitate again to go to the Belmont.

But the thing that struck me the most, was the amount of young people that were there. I'm guessing that the Belmont and pretty much the rest of the TC series have become more of social events that happen to have horses race every 45 minutes. That being said, the atmosphere was excellent and the crowd really got in to the races.

It made me think that the sport does have a chance, but they really need to capitalize on days like yesterday. That's where I think that NYRA might have dropped the ball. They had large crowd on hand and there was no promotion (or at least I didn't see any) of any future event to try to get some of the patrons back. Like I said, there were tons of young people there. Schedule a concert on a sunset Friday, bring your stub next week on Father's Day and get free admission and a hat. Have a handicapping help station, where newbies can ask questions the whole day. Just do something that might want to make them come back before next year's Belmont and even better maybe they'll come back because they like the racing..