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By Noel Michaels The new season at Belmont Park has arrived. The 2020 spring/summer meet opens June 3 (Wednesday), and runs through July 12. In many ways, the shortened 25-race-day meet will look a lot like Saratoga in terms of quality and duration. The season will be only six weeks and there’s a stakes race nearly every day, with a first post at 1:15 p.m. Racing will be conducted Thursdays through Sundays, except for opening week. No spectators will be in attendance. The biggest day, of course, will be the 152nd running of the Belmont Stakes on June 20. The

By Ray Wallin In business they tell you that you should reinvent yourself every five years to stay relevant. You don’t want your skillset to become obsolete and your position eliminated. The same is true at the track. There are a million reasons to reinvent your handicapping. The figures or angles that were working for you over the last few years are not as profitable. Your bread and butter track or circuit may have shut down or reduced the number of days it runs. Your day job is getting in the way and you need to find a better way

By Ed McNamara It all looked so perfect. Out of the blue, a dream situation dropped into my lap. I retired last August when Newsday, the Long Island newspaper where I’d worked since 1983, made me a buyout offer I couldn’t refuse. Suddenly, I had a 24/7/365 vacation to feed my obsession: to bet on site at as many racetracks as possible before being processed into eternity. I’ll be 70 in June, and I keep thinking of a poignant line from an old Simon and Garfunkel song, “Old Friends”: “How terribly strange to be 70.” I lost five old friends

By Margaret Ransom Sunday’s 79th running of the Santa Maria Stakes (G2) at Santa Anita, which before the coronavirus pandemic served as the traditional prep for the Santa Margarita Stakes (G1), drew a compact but highly talented field of five for the main track test. The Santa Margarita, traditionally run in March, was canceled this year, leaving this $200,000 test the signature event for distaffers on the newly returned Santa Anita stakes calendar. With the best fillies and mares from the division either retired, yet to return from breaks or too young to run in the older female division, most

By Richard Rosenblatt Just over a year ago, trainer Brendan Walsh returned to Dubai and looked on with pride as his promising 3-year-old Plus Que Parfait won the $2.5 million UAE Derby (G2) to earn a spot in the Kentucky Derby (G1). A few months later, the Irishman gave a leg up to jockey Ricardo Santana, Jr., on Plus Que Parfait and experienced his first Run for the Roses. His horse, sent off at 57-1, got as close as fifth with a quarter-mile to go, but faded to ninth and was elevated to eighth after first-place finisher Maximum Security was

By Ed McNamara Just when we thought it was safe to feel upbeat about this delayed and scrambled Triple Crown, it wasn’t. On Monday, the undefeated pair of Nadal and Charlatan seemingly had Bob Baffert in terrific position for the June 20 Belmont Stakes (G1). Now Nadal has been retired and Charlatan could be facing a disqualification from the biggest win of his three-race career. On Tuesday came the news that Charlatan had failed a drug test after his six-length runaway at Oaklawn Park on May 2 in the first division of the Arkansas Derby (G1). On Thursday, Nadal was