Saratoga Summer Meet to begin July 15
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (NEWS10) - The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) has released the meet dates for 2021. The Saratoga Summer Meet will run from July 15 until Labor Day.
Saratoga Race Course will operate the same way it has for the past few years with racing five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday with the exception of Labor Day. The 94th running of the Whitney will be on August 7 and the 152nd running of the Travers on August 28.
Racing at Aqueduct will run until March 28 for the Winter Meet and then will conduct an 11-day Spring Meet from Thursday, April 1 to Sunday, April 18.
Following the Spring Meet at Aqueduct, racing will move to Belmont for the 48-day spring/summer meet. Racing will be highlighted by the 153rd running of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, June 5.
The 2021 spring/summer meet will run from Thursday, April 22 through Sunday, July 11. Live racing will generally be conducted four days per week, Thursday-Sunday.
After meeting at Saratoga, live racing will return to Belmont for a 28-day fall meet, which will open on Thursday, September 16 and continue through Sunday, October 31.
Racing returns to the Big A on Friday, November 5 for an 18-day fall meet that will run through Sunday, December 5. The Aqueduct winter meet will then begin on Thursday, December 9 with the 2021 schedule to conclude on December 31.
In January 2021 NYRA said in a press release:
"To mitigate risk and reduce the spread of COVID-19, New York State currently requires all racetracks to operate without spectators in attendance and with a series of health and safety guidelines in place. A limited number of owners licensed by the state are currently permitted to attend live racing on the day their horse is entered."
This is a policy they have been following since the beginning of the pandemic.