The third leg of the Western New York Trackmaster series for pacers was featured at Batavia Downs on Monday afternoon (Feb. 5) and going in, there were three horses still undefeated in that competition. However by the end of the day, only one stayed perfect and that was Long Train Runnin, who won his third straight $9,000 Trackmaster 79 division.
Steady rain and an off track threw a curveball at bettors at Batavia Downs on Thursday (Feb. 1) as many favourites failed to fire allowing some bountiful payoffs to prevail. That included both featured races, where photos were needed to decide the winners.
For the fourth time in only six days of live racing in 2024, Batavia Downs set a new one day, all-source record handle while under the ownership of Western Regional Off Track Betting on Monday (Jan. 29). Bettors pushed $515,078 through the windows to top the short-lived old record of $509,180 which was set only one week ago.
A sloppy track combined with heavy snow that started to fall after the third race provided some messy going at Batavia Downs on Thursday afternoon (Jan. 11), but it didn’t take away from competitive racing and several very close finishes.
“Who cares?” While there were many complimentary remarks about the last Mane Attraction harness racing column pointing out future concerns, the one that was the most notable was the one that quite succinctly wrote, “Who cares?” It is a response just like that that has put harness racing’s future in jeopardy. When I came to