Report: Saratoga summer may start a week early in 2025

The New York Racing Association pushed Saratoga’s opening day up a week in 2019. It reportedly is on the verge of doing it again next year.

In an interview with Daily Racing Form’s David Grening, NYRA CEO and president David O’Rourke said an additional five or six days of racing starting July 3 or 4 are “on the table” for 2025. Those dates would be transferred  from the Belmont at Big A meet at Aqueduct.

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“It’s being looked at,” O’Rourke told DRF. “We still have to put that out in front of the racing committee.”

The current 40-day meet was established in 2010 on a six-days-a-week schedule, Wednesday-Monday, beginning in the second half of July. That went unchanged through 2018. In 2019 the 40 days were reconfigured into a five-days-a-week format running Wednesday-Sunday, and the summer season was moved up to start the first half of the July.

Closing day has been anchored on Labor Day since 1996.

Saratoga offered a preview week of sorts this year when the Belmont Stakes was moved there because of the $455 million renovation of Belmont Park. O’Rourke told DRF the racing festival that ran Thursday-Sunday, June 6-9, this year could be extended to Wednesday-Sunday, June 4-8, in 2025.

If construction goes as planned, the Belmont Stakes is scheduled to return to Belmont Park in 2026.

Asked if NYRA considered racing at Saratoga without any break between next year’s Belmont Stakes and the proposed July 3 or 4 start of the summer season, O’Rourke said that “is not on the table.” In between, then, NYRA will continue to run races at Aqueduct.