Meadowlands

Some two years ago, Randall Lane, the chief content officer for Forbes, and Bob Daugherty, an investor and educator, met for dinner and the conversation turned to horse racing. Both are fans of racing and they started to talk about why the sport isn't nearly as popular as the four major sports. The answer, they concluded, is that in baseball, basketball, football and hockey, the sports center around teams, leagues and standings. People fall in love with their teams, they root for them, they pay to see them play, they...

Madeline Rowland's journey to becoming a jockey reached the next level last Sunday when she scored her first win on the NYRA circuit over the Aqueduct main track. Still just a teenager and already over the million-dollar mark in earnings, Rowland knew early on that her future was in horses. "I always grew up around horses," she said. "My dad trained steeplechase horses before he passed and my mom galloped for a little bit and helped my dad train. When I was 12 or 13, I started pony racing and...

Due to a forecast calling for heavy rain, live racing has been cancelled for Saturday, Oct. 1, for the all-turf Monmouth-at-Meadowlands meet, the track announced on Friday. The six races scheduled for Saturday will be extras when entries are taken Tuesday, Oct. 4, for the Friday, Oct. 7, card. The five remaining all-turf cards following tonight's program will take place Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 22 with the exception of Saturday, Oct. 15, when Far Hills will feature its 101st steeplechase meet.

New Jersey native Bill Denver is today's subject in TDN's rotating series profiling racetrack photographers. We ask about memorable horses, races, and people they've viewed through the lens, and also talk about how the craft of equine imagery has evolved. Denver, 60, is the founder of Equi-Photo, which currently shoots the races and provides winner's circle photographs at Monmouth Park, the Meadowlands Thoroughbred meet, Parx, and Penn National. Separate from his work at East Coast tracks, Denver has previously freelanced for college athletic departments and numerous newspapers, including the New...

The Meadowlands released a statement late Thursday saying it will not scratch horses owned by Adrienne Hall, a harness owner and trainer who testified in federal court last week against Seth Fishman while admitting she used his performance-enhancing drugs on her horses. Fishman was found guilty Wednesday of two counts of conspiring to violate adulteration and misbranding laws and the manufacture of PEDs administered to racehorses, and faces up to 20 years in prison. The statement stands in contrast to the policy of the United States Trotting Association, which said...

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by eight harness owners who were banned at the tracks owned by Jeff Gural due to their ties with indicted trainer Rene Allard. Gural owns the Meadowlands in New Jersey and Tioga Downs and Vernon Downs in New York. The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs may file a subsequent suit on the same grounds. Despite the allegations against Allard, he had been cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice to train horses at a South Florida training center,...

Apparently, trainer Fausto Gutierrez, whose main base is in Mexico, didn't get the memo. Top U.S. horses just don't run back in three weeks or start four times over the span of 85 days. They don't go from track to track and take on all challengers. Owned by St. George Stable, Letruska (Super Saver) is doing what just isn't done anymore. Coming back in three weeks after winning the GI Ogden Phipps S., Letruska romped Saturday at Churchill Downs in the GII Fleur de Lis S., winning by 5 3/4...

The Week in Review, by Bill Finley We will need a bigger sample size before being able to fully evaluate how Monmouth's experiment with whip-free racing has fared. But this much is certain: Three days in and after hysterical fomenting from the pro-whip side of the argument, the whip-less races amounted to a big nothingburger. That is to say there were no incidents, no major form reversals, no mass boycotts from the horseplayers, etc. Perhaps this was just round one in what figures to be a long, drawn-out battle that...

A state audit of the New Jersey Racing Commission (NJRC) that sampled the records of 100 individuals listed as never having paid their fines for racing infractions has revealed that at least $272,000 remains uncollected, with 76% of that money being outstanding for penalties that were imposed by the NJRC as long as two decades ago. The Office of the State Auditor, which probed various aspects of the commission for the period between July 2016 through March 2020, also stated that the commission-produced equine fatality reports "are not always complete...

Even as a separate bill to allow fixed-odds wagering on in-state horse races is making its way through the New Jersey Legislature, the state's racing commission voted 4-0 Nov. 18 to give consent for licensees to try a fixed-odds pilot program during 2021 that would be limited to bets on out-of-state Grade I races. The vote was unanimous but not without misgivings, as several commissioners voiced concerns prior to the vote that fixed-odds betting would cannibalize the existing pari-mutuel system and eventually erode New Jersey's racing industry. And one New...

New Jersey moved one step closer to becoming the first state in the country to allow fixed-odds wagering on horse races when a bill that would authorize that form of betting was introduced in the New Jersey Legislature Thursday. The bill was introduced by New Jersey State Senator Vin Gopal and an identical bill has been sponsored by Assembly Gaming Committee Chairman Ralph Caputo and Deputy Republican Leader Assemblyman Ronald Dancer. With the bill enjoying bipartisan support, expectations are that it will pass and will be signed into law by...

The Meadowlands Racetrack, a top harness racing venue in New Jersey, temporarily shut down starting Tuesday evening after several employees tested positive for COVID-19. Live racing will take place as scheduled Friday, but without fans. The facility will reopen to fans Saturday at 10 a.m. The following is part of a statement the track release Tuesday evening: "The racetrack continues to take an aggressive stance against the spread of COVID-19. Over the past several days the medical team has identified a few individuals that tested positive for COVID-19 that they...