The good and bad in the Borgata Pacing Series

It’s great to see top-notch talent back after a long winter, but Yonkers gets a failing grade for how it structured the divisions.

by Brett Sturman

Tomorrow (March 30) begins this year’s MGM Borgata Pacing Series at Yonkers, where five preliminary legs will be contested on Mondays through April, with the final to take place on Friday (May 8).

Starting with the good:

After the long grind of overnight winter racing, some of the highest caliber horses, along with their top-notch drivers, return to the track. That’s not to say there haven’t been higher quality races in recent months elsewhere – there has – but this series marks the return of legitimate summertime free-for-all horses, along with those who aspire to do so for the first time. Stakes competition is back.

Of the 28 horses who have entered for the first preliminary leg, there are compelling storylines throughout, of which I’ll get to shortly.

But before that, the bad:

Entirely self-inflicted though by intentional design, the setup of these races is the antithesis of what a race secretary exists to do. Rather than stage the most competitive fields to maximize wagering interest, the leg 1 Borgata races are set up to maximize purse distribution to the race participants.

With 28 horses entered, the logical and no-brainer thing would have been for there to be four divisions, each with seven horses. Have you ever seen a scenario with those numbers where that wasn’t the case? Well, Yonkers went a different way.

Instead of four evenly-distributed and near-full fields, Yonkers unnecessarily added a fifth division, making it now three races of six horses, and two races of five horses. Why would any track do such a thing?

This isn’t the first year the races have been structured in this way, and the reason I most commonly hear is the desire to allow as many horses as possible to earn money, so that they can earn back the nomination and entrance fees and continue to stay and race in the later legs and not reduce the number of entrants from leg to leg. I suppose that’s fine if the goal is to keep otherwise non-competitive horses around in future watered-down races, but it essentially tells anyone who might want to wager on the races not to bother.

With five and six-horse fields and with the goal being to accumulate points and purses rather than win races, you could make the argument that all the preliminary legs be made non-wagering. Most races will resemble high quality qualifiers far more than the style of racing that you will eventually see in the series final.

Of course, none of this should diminish the talent of the horses that will be racing throughout the series, and there are some high quality and noteworthy ones. In alphabetical order, here are the ones that caught my attention:

ARODA N: A top-class pacer from Down-under as evidenced by his $238,000 earnings and 17-for-66 career record, the 7-year-old Art Major horse is a fresh addition for team Tritton. He qualified a little over a week ago at Yonkers on March 20 to be second by a half-length in a mile that went in 1:51.3. I had to do a double take on that and make sure that qualifier took place at Yonkers because I’d imagine that’s one of the fastest qualifier times at the track ever – maybe even the fastest. He finished second in that qualifier to fellow Borgata participant Soho Firestone A, and that pair was 20 lengths clear of the rest of the group.

CAPTAIN ALBANO: Well-known 5-year-old makes his 2026 debut where he comes off a near $600,000 campaign last year at 4. A double millionaire at $2.1 million in earnings and a Dan Patch winner both at ages 2 and 3, he continued to square off with the sport’s very best last year throughout all the major races. He closed out the season with a series of convincing MGM Grand Prix wins here at Yonkers before coming up just short in that series $250,000 final to Coaches Corner.

CELTIC SPIRIT N: Interesting type as this one comes from Ohio and goes from Noble to the Bongiorno barn that’s been firing on all cylinders, both here at Yonkers and across the river at The Meadowlands. This horse shows a 1:47 mark at Scioto achieved in an eye-catching night and is a high-quality animal in his own right. Worth noting a similar profiled horse named Sinbad who recently came to Yonkers from Noble and broke in consecutive races at Yonkers before putting it all back together at The Meadowlands and winning last week – that one for Tritton.

COACHES CORNER: Sports a similar profile to that of Captain Albano in not only what they achieved last year, but how they both finished the year with racing in the FanDuel and then the MGM Grand Prix series. I thought he made a super transition last year from small-track specialist to being able to compete on any size track, and his third-place finish in the FanDuel Championships and runner-up in the Breeders Crown final both showed that. He looked great in that return qualifier last week, besting Funtime Bayama and Captain Albano.

DONEGAL LUTHER N: Not a lot to go on, but could be a newcomer worth keeping tabs on. He made his North American debut last Monday and was pretty impressive in closing late to just miss against the heavily backed favorite Lou Hill.

MOSSDALE BEN N: The defending champ! He’s been racing throughout the winter at Yonkers in races coming from mainly bad posts. I don’t think he enters the series with the buzz he had at this time last year, but prepped for this series most recently with a win two weeks ago from the rail at odds of 1-9.

SOHO FIRESTONE A: As referenced earlier, he qualified back last week in a 1:51.3 effort at Yonkers which would signal all systems are go for his opening Borgata leg. He landed favorable post draws throughout the MGM Grand Prix towards the end of last year, one of which earned his seasonal mark of 1:50.4. He was 16 out of 21 being first or second last year; looks to make an impression in this year’s series.

TWISTED DESTINY: One of the best 3-year-olds from last year which includes a mark of 1:48, he returns to Yonkers where he won last year’s Messenger Stakes. He couldn’t have looked any more comfortable in that qualifying win at The Meadowlands last Saturday and I’m anxious to see how he transitions this year as a 4-year-old. Welcome back, Dexter Dunn!