TDN Writers' Room Podcast, Episode 37 with guest Martin Panza | May 20, 2020

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. Located in the epicenter of the world's coronavirus pandemic, NYRA hasn't run a race card since Mar. 15 at Aqueduct, and has remained in limbo like much of the state as the virus peaked, then slowly-painfully slowly-retreated.

But 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.

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 (Tapizar), and touched on some tracks who are still struggling, including Parx and Woodbine.

Read more on the TDN.