Both The Meadowlands and Woodbine Mohawk Park have adjusted post times in response to their customers.

by Debbie Little

For the last three weeks, The Meadowlands has been starting much closer to first race post time (6:20 p.m.) and ending earlier in the night, but according to The Big M’s chief operating officer/general manager Jason Settlemoir, this was not done in anticipation of thetemporary suspension of the post-time drag for the Championship Meet starting on May 2.

“I’m here until the last race goes official each live race night,” Settlemoir said. “I send a nightly recap to Jeffrey [Gural] at the end of live racing. You know how much I like getting out of here after midnight? As much as I like looking around late in the evening and seeing no one here. It’s not fun, it’s not exciting.”

Meadowlands president/chief executive officer Gural has told HRU on more than one occasion that he hated how much time it took to run race cards these days, and he reiterated it again last week.

“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,” Gural said. “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.”

Even though advertised post time for The Meadowlands has been 6:20 p.m. for quite a while, it was not unusual to see the off time for the first race closer to 6:35 p.m., with the 14^th and final race on the card going off near midnight.

“When [mutuel manager] Mike Refinski and I took over doing post times again at the beginning of the new year [2025], I told Michael I wanted to move quicker and be done by 11:15 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at night, not at midnight,” Settlemoir said. “Additionally, I was noticing this year that the total handle on our last two races was brutally weak. So, I made an adjustment to our off time for the first race as well to go earlier. Since making that move [three] weeks ago, we have noticed an uptick in total handle in the last two races.”

Starting in mid-February, you can track the changes as the last race went off before 11:30 p.m., followed by the first race shifting closer to 6:20 p.m. on Feb. 28.

On March 1, it was obvious that the shift to an earlier start for the first race even caught Meadowlands guest co-host Derick Giwner by surprise, because he said so on the air.

As Settlemoir has told HRU in the past, The Meadowlands cares about their customers, employees and horsepeople, so when complaints are made, they take them seriously.

According to Settlemoir, there have not been any complaints so far about starting and ending a little earlier.

Also, in response to their customers, Woodbine Mohawk Park actually shifted its post time from 7:10 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the start of the year.

“I will say we’ve heard loud and clear that people find our race cards too long, and we made an effort this winter,” said Bill McLinchey, the vice president, standardbred racing for Woodbine Entertainment Group. “We’ve moved our post time earlier, and we’ve made an effort to try and get our races over with in the winter by shortly after 10 o’clock through the week and before 11 o’clock on weekends and I think that’s been well received by the horsemen and our customers.

“I mean, we still are dragging, but we are making an effort to try and get the races run off a little bit quicker.”

It’s too early for McLinchey to tell exactly how successful that move has been with the amount of cancellations they’ve had to endure this winter.

“We’ve been kind of lucky the last two or three years where our winters haven’t been that bad, but this year has been a good, old fashioned Canadian winter,” he said. “It’s been hard for track crews all over.”

McLinchey went on to say that timing is important not just for when the card starts and stops but for everything in between.

“The same people that complain that it takes too long to run a race are the same ones that complain when a Mohawk race lands on top of a Meadowlands race, so everyone’s trying to juggle and land where they’re not on top,” McLinchey said. “On a Saturday night, you’ve got Meadowlands, you’ve got Mohawk, you’ve got Turfway and Santa Anita and Northfield, and the thoroughbreds, I don’t think they’re too concerned about us, but we’re trying to make sure we don’t land on them.”

According to McLinchey, if you miss that sweet spot, you’ll know it.

“I can confirm that it is not great for your handle if you’re running a race at the same time as The Meadowlands,” he said. “Our goal is always to run a race 10 to 12 minutes after one of their races, and we’ve chatted with Jason about that, and his goal is to stay off us. But at the same time, you’re trying to make sure that tracks like Turfway and Santa Anita [aren’t close]. There’s a lot of wagering dollars tied up there, too, so if you can happen to do your best to make sure you don’t land on one of those, it’s better for everybody, too.”