Track president Jeff Gural spoke exclusively to HRU about their plan to go to post on time for the Championship Meet.

by Debbie Little

Meadowlands president/chief executive officer Jeff Gural told HRU that post-time drag will be suspended for the track’s Championship Meet that starts on May 2.

Gural explained why this particular meet was chosen.

“That’s the time we have the best product,” he said. “And I’m tired of everyone criticizing track owners for not eliminating the drag. I think everyone agrees that the drag is terrible, and I really don’t understand why any track that’s subsidized by slot machines would have a drag, since the amount of revenue they get from their export is relatively small.”

Gural said relying on the drag makes it hard to get people to come to watch the races in person, including himself.

“When I was younger, and the sport actually had customers [on track], I remember going to Roosevelt and Yonkers, and they would have 10 races that took three hours. Now, we have 14 races that take over five hours. And with the exception of the Hambletonian, I never stay past the ninth or 10th race.

“Obviously, we’re in a bind, because we’re essentially catering to the off-track customers and ignoring the on-track customers, which is the exact opposite of what other sports are doing. As we’ve seen, Major League Baseball makes the games go quicker. And it’s worked for them, but, obviously, they have a product that people actually want to watch.

“During the Championship Meet, a lot of those nights we have stakes races, and if I’m ever going to get people who actually care about the product, it’s the Championship Meet. I assume it will cost me money, but nobody else seems willing to join with us, so we continue to put out a terrible product [because of the drag].”

In the Jan. 19 issue of HRU, editor Dave Briggs — a vocal hater of the drag — presented a slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion for The Meadowlands to send out races every 10 minutes. In HRU’s Feb. 2 edition, Hambletonian Society president/chief executive officer John Campbell had a spirited debate with Briggs about, among other things,eliminating the drag and the negative effect it could have if The Meadowlands tries to do it alone.

“While Campbell believes eliminating drag would be handle suicide, I believe failing to eliminate drag is suicide for the entire sport,” Briggs wrote.

Campbell said to Briggs, “Until — and this will never happen unfortunately — you could get all of the tracks to go on post or within a minute of post, you’re never going to eliminate drag and it’s a terrible detriment to the future of wagering on horse racing.”

Gural has said, on more than one occasion, that The Meadowlands has entertained dropping the post-time drag in the past, but, to Campbell’s point, they couldn’t get most tracks to join them.

Woodbine Mohawk Park was the one place that did entertain the possibility.

HRU reached out to Bill McLinchey, the vice president, standardbred racing for Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG), to see how those conversations went in the past.

(Editor’s note: Due to the fact The Meadowlands’ decision to stop the drag during the championship meet was not, yet, public information, McLinchey was not informed that it was Gural’s intention to proceed as such. Therefore, his comments were made prior to that knowledge).

“Well, I think Jason [Settlemoir of The Meadowlands] and I actually met with tracks, I’m going to say five or six years ago, and asked, ‘Hey, if we all do this together, are you interested?’ And I think Mohawk and The Meadowlands were the only two tracks that were interested,” McLinchey said.

When asked if The Meadowlands planned to reach out to other tracks to see if anyone would join them this time around, Meadowlands chief operating officer/general manager Settlemoir said, “We asked a couple of times and we were told ‘no thanks’ by several racetracks. I figure we will go it alone like most things we do and see if others jump on board. My guess is they won’t, but maybe I will be pleasantly surprised.”

Since The Meadowlands had not formally announced their intention to suspend the drag, HRU did not tip their hand to WEG, but did tell McLinchey that there are rumors that The Meadowlands is planning something.

“I think that I would be interested, but again, I think it has to be more than just the two tracks,” McLinchey said. “I think it has to be everybody, and I’m not sure we would ever get everybody on the same page to do it.”

McLinchey also said that eliminating the drag, although a good thing, might not make everyone happy.

“If we decided that there’s no drag tomorrow, but we started putting up 18 minutes on the board in between races, I don’t think they’d like that either,” he said.

In that conversation with Briggs, Campbell said that past attempts to reduce the drag had been detrimental to handle.

“It’s been tried and it’s failed every time they shorten the time in between races or eliminate drag,” Campbell said. “It doesn’t work for the off-track. [Though the current] system doesn’t work for the on-track. I think the on-track [experience] would be better with the time in between races if they went on post. I think that is such a turn-off, to look at some tracks and see ‘1 minute to post’ and the horses aren’t even on the track. It’s an insult to their intelligence, but, at the same time, in the current system, that generates handle.”

The Meadowlands tried a modified drag back in January of 2022, where the time was cut in half, but it was scrapped after six weeks and there was handle loss.

Gural said he thinks Campbell is right and this drag experiment might, again, be added to the loss column.

“I assume that’s what will happen, so it’ll cost me money,” Gural said. “It’s cost me millions of dollars already in losses to keep The Meadowlands afloat. Unfortunately, the breeders don’t appreciate it and neither do most of the horsemen, especially the drivers.”

When asked why tracks with slot machines would even care about a drag since they are not handle dependent like The Meadowlands and Mohawk, McLinchey said, “Well, I think there’s a certain amount of pride that comes with trying to bet as much as you can with some of these tracks.

“I think that it’s no secret that if you want to bet more, you drag a little more, right? And John was 100 per cent right that if you cut it off, you’re putting some of your revenue at extreme risk, and I know for us, we’re not in a place right now where we can take on that risk.”

As for what Mohawk would do if The Meadowlands reached out and said we’re going to drop the drag, McLinchey said, “I think we would want to make sure that there were more than just the two of us involved.

“Handle definitely matters and we would definitely have to be very careful that we wouldn’t do anything that would disrupt handle. Anytime that there would be less revenue coming in, there’s going to be some questions asked.”

Gural said he hopes other tracks will get on board and join The Meadowlands with dropping their post-time drag, but thinks it’s unlikely to happen.

“I doubt it,” Gural said. “I don’t think they have any interest in promoting racing because they would like racing to disappear as quickly as possible as we’ve seen in Florida. You never know. Maybe if we make enough of a splash, they will. I don’t know. 

“But, you know, I depend on wagering, so if by some miracle, I could get more people to come and sample the on-track experience, that would help, because it was designed to try to get people to come.

“We created [the dining club] Trotters for owners. It’s what people told me we needed to get owners, but the reality is, most owners would just as soon watch at home, which I understand, because I do it. But it’s so much more fun to be at the racetrack if you’re an owner and go in the paddock, and if you win, go down and get your picture taken. But I think, maybe if we eliminate the drag, we’ll get more owners to come because it wouldn’t be an ordeal and they could spend a couple of hours and then go home without having it dragged out the way we do.

“I’m just tired of seeing people criticize all of us for the drag, because we all know it’s the wrong thing to do. Why would you go out of your way to present a product that is not well received by your on-track customers? I want to try to see if we can get on-track customers.

“Plus, we have a couple of 3-year-olds coming back at 4… so we’ll see if maybe actually having horses that the public is used to watching will bring them out the way Bulldog Hanover did.”