As you know tracks run all across the United States every day of the year that bettors want to bet. Years ago Teamsters Local 858, Barry Yomtov President, which represented the Managers of New York City OTB and the employees of Nassau OTB told its members that the tracks did not run in New York on Roman Catholic Easter Sunday and Roman Catholic Palm Sunday because the jockeys did not want to ride. This argument did not address the constitutional rights of New York Bettors secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3. Even without reference to the New York Constitution it is clear to many that New York State can't pick and choose to close Nassau OTB on Roman Catholic Easter Sunday and Roman Catholic Palm Sunday in preference to Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday and Greek Orthodox Palm Sunday.
Please share with the bettors who bet at Nassau OTB your opinion on whether BETTORS should be able to bet at Nassau OTB on any day of the year and Nassau OTB employees who wish to work be able to do so. NYC OTB employees were paid double time for working on ANY SUNDAY that they chose to work
Nassau OTB employees are paid time and a half for WORKING on ANY SUNDAY.. They are paid straight time if they chose or are forced to take vacation.
I have repeatedly petitioned the NY Racing and Wagering Board to ask New York Attorney General for a FREE FORMAL OPINION to determine whether
1. NY PML Sec 105 and Sec 109 apply to Nassau OTB
2. Whether the above statutes are constitutionally defensible
3 Whether the above statutes violate the rights of Nassau County Bettors secured by NY Const. Art, 1, Sec. 3
4. Whether the above statutes are vague, indefinite and/or overly broad as the Gregorian and Julian Calendars do not define the same Sunday to be Palm Sunday in all years. Ditto for Easter Sunday.
Countless bettors at Nassau OTB seek to buy a program the day before "Palm Sunday" and "Easter Sunday". They are told that OTB is CLOSED.
Jockey Ramon Dominguez Is Cool, Calm and Collecting Millions ...
www.nytimes.com/.../an-unorthodox-jockey-and-predictable-winner....
2 days ago – Ramon Dominguez, with an unorthodox style on New York racetracks, will lead riders in the United States in earnings for a third year.I-
Thanks for the help. The item’s
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Claude
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LI Confidential
> Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
A Jockey Is Cool, Calm and Collecting Millions
By RYAN GOLDBERG
It is easy to pick out Ramon Dominguez in a crowded field. To the
untrained eye, most jockeys look the same in the saddle, but not
Dominguez. Taller than your average rider, at 5 feet 6 inches, he sits
high in the saddle, stretches his hands onto the reins in an unorthodox
manner and flashes his whip in an almost exaggerated half-windmill arc.
There is an easier way to spot him, too: look for who is in front at the
finish.
Dominguez, who will turn 36 on Saturday, is the best rider in the United
States, at least by the metric of money earned. Based in New York, he
led the nation in earnings the previous two years and is about to do so
again. He received the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey the past two
years, with another in store. This year his mounts have earned $24.2
million and counting, already a record.
And Dominguez is self-taught. Of his riding style, he said: “I learned
on my own in Venezuela. Sometimes it looks awkward, but it feels very
comfortable for me. If I could change it, I might.” He smiled. “But it’s
too late to be making changes now.”
Why would he? With purses in New York higher than ever, aided by the
year-old slot machines at Aqueduct Racetrack, the riding colony around
Dominguez is as strong as ever. And yet he has dominated since arriving
permanently in late 2008. Facing the best at Saratoga last summer,
Dominguez rolled to a record 68 wins. In recent years he has piloted the
champions Gio Ponti, Havre de Grace and Hansen. At the Breeders’ Cup
this month, he won the $3 million Turf aboard the long shot Little Mike.
He is also the king of Aqueduct, the Ozone Park oval that opened Nov. 2
for its six-month haul. The top riders will move to Gulfstream Park in
South Florida at the end of this month, except for Dominguez. He has won
the last five winter meets at Aqueduct, and he is a short bet to win a
sixth. In the past, staying behind would cost a rider opportunities on
the better horses once the stables returned to New York from Florida,
but Dominguez changed that notion.
“The perception of a winter rider — in quotation marks — has shifted
over the years,” he said. “It’s also not a financial sacrifice any
longer, because the money is so good here. You can make more here than
going south.”
After Aqueduct’s purses skyrocketed last winter, the New York Racing Association faced fierce condemnation over a rash of fatal breakdowns
during that time. A state-appointed task force that investigated the
breakdowns proposed new rules on medication and veterinary oversight
that the New York State Racing and Wagering Board approved.
“Of course everybody had their concerns,” Dominguez said. “But I feel
like something good came out of this negative event. I’m optimistic that
these reforms will work. It gives everybody peace of mind.”
Last Wednesday morning in the Aqueduct jockeys’ room, Dominguez answered
questions while running on a treadmill at top speed. To make sure his
weight stayed no higher than 115 pounds, he wore a heavy polyester
sweatshirt and, with a rag in one hand, wiped the sweat from his face.
He also frequents the sauna, which jockeys call the box.
Dominguez is an avid chess player, and the way he explains his fortunes on the track speaks to that mind-set.
“You can sense how things are going to happen before they happen,” he
said. “It’s hard to put into words. It’s second nature. You see the
paths before they open.”
Dominguez was born in Caracas and brought up in Cagua, an hour and a
half away. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father ran an off-track betting
parlor in Caracas that had been in the family for two generations. It
was open on weekends, and Dominguez’s father would sometimes take him to
help around the shop. At the end of the weekend, his father had to
drive the betting machines to La Rinconada, the Caracas racecourse,
where they were emptied of money. At 13, Dominguez first watched a live
race there and resolved to become a jockey.
But there was no horsemanship in his family, and his parents disapproved
of his career choice. As a trade-off, and perhaps as a way to placate
the boy, they allowed him to take show-jumping lessons nearby. Dominguez
was content, and after a year he entered some competitions. But after
one competition, he had a fateful encounter.
“I was on the bus on my way home and saw this kid with a helmet on,”
Dominguez recalled. “I went up to him and asked him about it, and he
told me he was riding racehorses at a training center nearby. I didn’t
even know there was a training center nearby. So the next time I was on
my way to show-jumping lessons, I stayed on the bus and got off at the
training center.”
Dominguez did this a few times, but his parents quickly found out. They
were not as unhappy as he expected, Dominguez said, and he soon won them
over with his commitment. Most mornings he would travel on three buses
to the training center, where he taught himself the basics of riding
racehorses, and then return home, shower and ride another bus to high
school.
Contrary to his individualized path, most would-be jockeys in Latin
America attend formal riding schools. The best graduates are then
connected to agents in the United States. But during his development,
Dominguez said, the riding school at La Rinconada was closed. So he
received his apprenticeship at two perilous, rough-riding bush tracks
outside the city limits. He lived in dreary, dirty tack rooms and also
groomed the horses.
Seven months later, there was a promotion for young jockeys to go to La
Rinconada, and with the help of a politically connected friend,
Dominguez jumped at the opportunity. He rode there throughout 1995,
after he had turned 18, having little success the first six months but
finishing with 53 wins.
“It was exciting for me to make it to the big track, but the reality of
it is I was extremely green,” Dominguez said. “I didn’t have much
confidence at all. I was focused on making a career of this, but I was
pretty far behind the other kids. I was intimidated. It wasn’t easy for
me by any means.”
Dominguez did not linger in Venezuela. With the help of the same friend
who got him to La Rinconada, he was set up with an agent in the United
States. He arrived in 1996 and won his first race, at Hialeah Park in
Florida, that March.
‘Remarkable Hands’
Success came swiftly. From Florida he moved to Maryland, long known for
able horsemen and jockeys, like Chris McCarron and Kent Desormeaux, who
had gone on to Hall of Fame careers in California and New York.
Edgar Prado was another such rider. When Prado left Maryland for New
York in 1999, his agent, Steve Rushing, stayed behind. In what Dominguez
called “a turning point for me,” he soon joined with Rushing. Much of
Prado’s business went to Dominguez, who is still with Rushing after
almost 13 years.
In 2001, only five years after arriving in the United States, Dominguez
led all riders nationally in wins, and he repeated the feat in 2003. His
move to the big stage was only a matter of time, and in New York his
immediate success was startling — he won nine consecutive leading rider
titles in his first year and a half.
Dominguez is known for his quiet hands, his tremendous patience and his
strong, signature style of pushing and driving in the final furlongs.
Graham Motion, the trainer of last year’s Kentucky Derby
winner, Animal Kingdom, was one of Dominguez’s earliest supporters.
Their success together in Maryland and Delaware helped propel both
careers.
“Ramon had a knack — he still has a knack — for getting horses to relax
that other jockeys find difficult to ride, which is something I noticed
about him from the beginning,” Motion said. “I think that’s his biggest
asset. He’s just got remarkable hands on a horse.”
Asked to explain his talent, Dominguez said it was more art than
science. “It’s something you kind of learn on your own,” he said. “I
can’t describe how I do it. I have a passion for horses and I just try
to listen to what they tell me, instead of maybe being a more mechanical
rider. I feel like that patience pays off.”
Motion often gave Dominguez his most unruly horses. One of those, a
headstrong gelding named Better Talk Now, responded to Dominguez’s
patient handling, and their rapport shaped a memorable career. With
Dominguez riding for the latter half of Better Talk Now’s nearly
eight-year racing career, the horse won the 2004 Breeders’ Cup Turf — a
milestone victory for trainer and jockey — and more than $4.3 million
and five Grade I races.
“I enjoy the challenge if a horse is difficult or too aggressive,”
Dominguez said. “I take it as a personal challenge to get that horse to
relax.”
This suits the rider, and helps make him stand out in grass races, where
saving ground and patience decide razor-thin margins. Dominguez’s calm
demeanor and humble attitude also stand out in the jockeys’ room, where
he is widely admired.
Asked if success had changed Dominguez, Motion said: “No, not at all.
That’s the most remarkable thing. He’s still personable, down to earth,
kind, well spoken. None of that has changed, not even a little bit.”
An Impulse for Improvement
To figure out a jockey’s income, the rule of thumb is to take 8.5
percent of his horses’ earnings; for his career, Dominguez’s mounts have
earned nearly $190 million.
But he does not flash his wealth. He drives a 2006 Honda Civic, which
replaced the 1993 Honda Accord he drove for 13 years. He lives near
Belmont Park in Floral Park, N.Y., with his wife, Sharon, a former
exercise rider he met at Delaware Park, and their sons, Alexander, 7,
and Matthew, 6. They also own a 14-acre horse farm near Elkton, Md. His
family is the main reason he rides year-round in New York.
“I’m well aware of this being a short career,” he said. “I just hope
that I can do the best I can with what I make, not only for myself but
the future of my family. My wife and I have a simple lifestyle, and we
take pleasure in the small things. I don’t keep up with the Joneses, so
to speak. I feel like I have it all.”
Dominguez’s rise to the top has encountered a few blips. Jockeys are
regular visitors to emergency rooms. Dominguez missed a month last
spring because of a separated collarbone. Other major injuries included
fractured collarbones, wrists and even his skull, the outcome of a nasty
spill in 1998 at Delaware Park. His longest layoff has been four
months, with a broken wrist, which is better than most of his
contemporaries.
Out of superstition, Dominguez said he liked to avoid the topic.
Dominguez said he also refrained from setting goals, but he acknowledged
that the classic victories that had eluded him were in his mind. His
best finish in the Kentucky Derby, for example, was a second in 2006.
Although he is a first-choice jockey, Dominguez continues to put in his
work off the track, arriving at the jockeys’ room several hours before
the races, to exercise and study the card and watch race replays for the
horses he is riding for the first time.
He does not cherry-pick races, either. From the Derby pageantry to
unmemorable races on frigid Wednesdays in January, Dominguez has been
the busiest jockey in racing in 2012, with 1,333 mounts through Sunday —
a day on which he won five races at Aqueduct.
“I’m very critical of myself,” he said. “After a race, I always replay
what I could have done differently, even if I win. I still have my
doubts on a daily basis. You can’t rest on your laurels. This business
sure changes quick.”
Last Wednesday, with the first race 45 minutes away, Dominguez slowed to
a jog on the treadmill. He usually runs two miles, but this morning he
ran three and a half. Wednesday mornings are often challenging after two
days off and an accompanying weight gain. The extra fitness was also
necessary for the winter ahead, the bone-chilling, thumping winds off
nearby Jamaica Bay as familiar as losing tickets scattered on Aqueduct’s
grandstand floors.
Winters are physically demanding, Dominguez said, but not as mentally
demanding as the high-stakes drama of Saratoga or Belmont.
But this is Dominguez’s turf, and he was excited for another meet in
which his fellow riders could hope for only second-place money. With a
smile, he said, “Winning always makes you feel a little warmer.”
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