Hey! It's Opening Day!

The 75th aniversary of Delaware Park, and the first Horseman's run meet at Monmouth Park both open today. Both meets will see a reduction of purses and in Delaware's case less days running. Unfortunately, both meets where hit with off season troubles. With Delaware it was the annual "we don't have a contract with the horsemen" deal, and Monmouth's lease with Morris Bailey fell through. Both where sorted out and two big summer races the Delaware Handicap, and the Haskell will run as planned.

Since Delaware Park is my home track, I thought I would give a little bit of an outlook on what I expect:

The jockey colony at Delaware will look very different this year without Gabriel Saez and Rosie Napravnik. Both have moved onto two different tracks, Gabe will be doing his riding at Churchill and Rosie will be doing her's at the Belmont/Saratoga. However, defending champ Joe Rocco Jr. (who is riding this weekend at Monmouth), Abel Castallano Jr. (the younger brother to Javiar) and Jeremy Rose are back.

Larry Jones will not be at Delaware this year (prob. due to the Oaklawn debacle). However, Tim Richey, Graham Motion, Jonathon Shepard, Michael Matz, Mac Robinson and Steve Hobby are all expected to have horses run during the meet. The Delaware Park blog has picked Jamie Ness as the early favorite for the training title.

As for the big races during year, there is a great chance that both Oaks winner Believe You Can and her jockey could return to their old stomping ground in the DE Oaks. The DelCap prob. won't be as epic this year with the retirements of Blind Luck and Havre de Grace, but I expect the likes of Royal Delta, Awesome Maria, the defending DE Oaks winner St. John's River and Juanita to take part in this year's edition.

I will keep everyone updated on the Delaware meet throughout the summer and most of the fall leading up to closing day which is BC Saturday, November 3rd.