As the racing world mostly returned to order last week with the reopening of Santa Anita and Churchill and dates for two-thirds of the rescheduled Triple Crown being locked in, eyes turned to the New York Racing Association. With Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proclamation that racing could resume in New York beginning June 1, the door was opened for the flood of announcements that came from NYRA this week: Belmont Park will reopen for racing June 3, with a condensed and reduced stakes schedule headlined by the nine-furlong GI Belmont S. June 20.

Wednesday morning, NYRA’s vice president of racing operations, Martin Panza, joined the TDN Writers’ Room presented by Keeneland for a 30-plus-minute interview to answer all the questions of the day on racing in the Empire State. Calling in via Zoom as the Green Group Guest of the Week, Panza talked about, among other things, the significance of returning the sport to COVID-battered New York City, whether or not a Saratoga meet is still in the cards, and what the last two months have been like as NYRA adapted to meet the ever-shifting demands of a pandemic.

Asked about why the Belmont was slated for June 20, a date that is months before the next Triple Crown race, Panza said, “Obviously, when Churchill let us know that they were moving the Derby to Sept. 5, it caught us off guard, and it was tricky because you’re working with NBC. Are there TV windows available? We started to make phone calls and talk to the tracks that have major 3-year-old races and tried to start to place them on a calendar in front of us. With [the Preakness] going Oct. 3, we didn’t really want to run the Belmont Stakes up against the Breeders’ Cup and maybe against football.”

As for why the race was cut back from 1 1/2 miles to nine furlongs, Panza emphasized that attempt at cooperation with the rest of the 3-year-old calendar, saying, “It didn’t make a lot of sense with horses having not run for several months to run the Belmont this year at 1 1/2 miles. I’m a big believer in long-distance racing. We’ve always tried to offer longer races in New York, so I get the tradition of the Belmont. For this year though with the pandemic, everything has changed.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, in the  West Point News of the Week segment, the writers recapped the first major cross-country weekend of racing in months, which included the triumphant return of champion Monomoy Girl, and touched on some tracks who are still struggling, including Parx and Woodbine. Click here to listen to the show, and click here to watch it on Vimeo.