This Strange Plan

- This strange
plan is random at best

This strange....
how much more can I take?

This strange
change in atmosphere
and in gravity too

- Built to Spill

Thus far, Tom Precious in Bloodhorse is the only one reporting on this strange plan being hatched by Governor Spitzer to close Aqueduct and sell it off, retain NYRA to run Saratoga, and pick someone else to run racing and slots (and the inevitable table games) at a winterized Belmont. So, maybe if we just ignore it, it will just go away.

But I doubt that. For one thing, Spitzer hinted at this a couple of weeks ago in a strange, rambling interview with the Troy Record which seemed to reveal not only his ignorance of the process thus far, but even of how an RFP works. At that time he said that some people "asked legitimate questions about the need for two downstate tracks."

Of course, the idea of selling Aqueduct is not new; it's been raised at various times over the last decade, and, in fact, initial steps to winterize Belmont have already been completed. And though it makes absolutely no sense from a sporting aspect, the idea of raising vast sums of money always makes sense to government, especially if it can be achieved via a simple land grab. The consequence would be an endless season at a track which could only be truly winterized if they put the entire massive complex on a rotating platform so that the front of the grandstand wasn't totally in the shade come the winter months.

My feelings toward Belmont are mixed. I love the beautiful park area, the stakes schedule, the high quality of racing (sometimes), the two lush grass courses. But I don't really care for the main track, which is just too damn big. There are no two turn races other than the Belmont, and the races all start far, far away on the backstretch. I don't really consider mile and an eighth races around one turn to be true distance tests. But it's the contrast between that and Aqueduct - the transition to two turn races back to one, and vice versa - the ying and the yang - that provides juicy handicapping angles that last throughout the racing year. The idea of an entire year of one turn dirt racing makes me go cold. When I contemplate the idea of being stuck inside that building watching December $12,500 claimers starting on the other side of Nassau County in the same monotonous routes, I'm thinking hell, I might as well just go to Yonkers. I can change the name of this blog to something like They're Off....Offstride!

I wonder too if any of the bidders would agree to such an arrangement. After all, they're SO interested in the racing part; Empire especially, who promised the Saratoga horse park and all sorts of new development there. Don't you think it would expose the bidders' hypocrisy if they still agreed to become strictly a downstate operator of a racino in Elmont?

Of course, there will be objections from the racing community, and legal issues, such as NYRA's claim that they own the land, and the matter of the intent of the original donors to have the land go to charity should it cease being used for racing. So I won't turn in my parking sticker just yet. But to me, this is an ominous turn in the proceedings; one which would have been moot by now had Pataki let the Lottery Division approve the racino. On the other hand, maybe this is exactly what he had in mind all along.

And it's strange,
but not all that strange
that it's strange,
but what's so strange
about that?

Yeah it's strange
but what isn't strange...