by Melissa Keith

Regular players of Woodbine Mohawk Park will be tuning in a little earlier in the New Year, as the Campbellville, ON track test-drives a new 6:30 p.m. (ET) post time starting Thursday, Jan. 2. The post time will remain the usual 7:10 p.m. (ET) on Monday, Dec. 30.

“I think it’s something we’ve thought about for a while,” said Bill McLinchey, vice-president of standardbred racing for Woodbine Entertainment. “We’re always talking about how we can improve or look to do things a little differently. We thought that maybe an earlier start time would line us up better with The Meadowlands on weekends.”

Mohawk has been regularly racing with a 7:10 p.m. (ET) post time and only occasional variations, such as the afternoon Boxing Day (Dec. 26) card that began at 1 p.m.

McLinchey told HRU that scheduling Mohawk cards with a new 6:30 p.m. post time for race 1 is expected to help prevent overlap with its biggest pari-mutuel rival. 

“Our goal is to be 10 to 12 minutes after their race goes [at The Meadowlands],” he said. “We try to coordinate, so we thought that with them starting at 6:20, if we start at 6:30, we’ll land where we want to be with them throughout the night.”

McLinchey said that moving to an earlier post time made it easier to avoid simultaneous starts at North America’s two biggest harness tracks by handle.

“When we were starting after 7 and they were starting at 6:20, it just gave us more time to kind of get where they might have a delay or something like that, and our first race ends up going at the same time as theirs,” he noted. 

Paying careful attention to post times and delays at other tracks is already a priority, said McLinchey. “We’re doing that,” he said. “On Thursdays now, there’s a lot of [simulcast] traffic. Like last Thursday night [Dec. 5], there was Meadowlands, there was us, there was Yonkers, Flamboro, Woodbine thoroughbred, and Turfway [Park] in Kentucky had started.”

Coming from a harness racing family (McLinchey is the nephew of Goshen Hall of Fame horsemen John and Jim Campbell and the grandson of Jack Campbell), Woodbine’s VP of standardbred racing said that ending a little sooner on dark winter nights was another consideration when it came to the timing of the post time change.

“I hope that for the horsemen, if it gets them home a little earlier in the wintertime, I think that’s appreciated by both horses and horsepeople,” he said.

A third factor behind the shift was acknowledging the demographics of harness racing bettors. McLinchey agreed that not many on-track or simulcast customers are night owls anymore, although they may have been when they were younger. He said that some patrons may find that the earlier Mohawk post time works better with having dinner at the track. 

“I think that our feedback is to keep the people in the simulcast [lounges] like our Champions [Ontario OTB outlets], [change was necessary],” he said. “It seemed like [OTB customers] weren’t hanging in there until 11 o’clock anymore.

“I think, too, that the wagering has changed a little bit, where our first race is the best-bet race on the card now, and that wasn’t always the case.

“Our biggest pool of the night is the Pick 5 pool, which starts right then [race 1], so we have to make sure that nothing negatively impacts it.”

Another multi-leg wager, the non-jackpot Pick 6, debuted at Mohawk on Dec. 26, attracting a promising $19,233 at first offering. It begins in race 4 each card going forward, with the early Pick 4 now starting in race 3. If no one hits all six winners in the Pick 6, 100 per cent of the pool will carry over to Mohawk’s next live card. 

However small the post-time adjustment, McLinchey said the track was busy making sure that horseplayers knew ahead of time.

“We’re just trying to get the word out. We’re just trying to make sure that people don’t miss us those first couple of nights at 6:30, and they tune in shortly after 7 and we’re already rolling.”

He added that the earlier start was not necessarily a permanent change.

“We’ll have to reassess, probably the biggest factor is when the [Woodbine] thoroughbreds start back. We want to make sure that we have enough time after them.”

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) approved 129 race dates next year for Woodbine Racetrack, beginning on Saturday, April 26, 2025. Mohawk’s thoroughbred sister track has a 1:10 p.m. (Eastern) post time except on Thursdays, when race 1 is slated to start at 4:50 p.m. 

Mohawk was allotted 220 race dates in the coming year, with the new 6:30 p.m. post time applicable from Jan. 2 through March 29, 2025, as well as on Saturday, May 17, June 14 (Pepsi North America Cup), and September 20 (Metro Pace and Mohawk Million). 

Although McLinchey called early social media reactions to the earlier post time “pretty harsh,” he said that it was always worth trying something that could prove popular with Mohawk customers and the people working hands-on with the horses.

 “I would imagine that the horsepeople will be pretty happy with the change. With winter and weather and all that, I think it’s something, so we’ll do it. We’re going to give it a shot. I mean, it isn’t a huge change.”