Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Home > 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.
Ashlyn Harris denounces claim USWNT isn't 'welcoming to Christians' after old Jaelene Hinkle remarks recirculate
United States women’s national team backup goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris took on a tweet claiming the team omitted one of the NWSL’s best left backs because she was a Christian.
Jaelene Hinkle, a member of the North Carolina Courage, was unsurprisingly left off the roster in May for reasons “solely based on soccer,” head coach Jill Ellis said, but many have alleged it’s religious discrimination. Hinkle controversially declined a national team call-up in 2017 because she didn’t want to wear the LGBTQ Pride Month jerseys.
The issue hasn’t been raised since, until a tweet of a year-old interview with Hinkle started to make the rounds again Sunday.
Harris: religion isn’t problem, intolerance is
Obianuju Ekeocha, a public speaker and founder of Culture of Life Africa, shared an old video Sunday on Twitter of Hinkle on CBN’s “The 700 Club.” The clip is from the end, when Hinkle speaks about being called up to the national team and then declining it since they were wearing LGBTQ Pride Month jerseys.
“I felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear” the USWNT jersey with rainbow numbers, she said in the clip from June 2018.
“I’m essentially giving up the one little girl’s dream about their entire life, and I’m saying no to [it]. It was very disappointing.”
Ekeocha wrote that “Apparently, the US women’s Football team is not a very welcoming place for Christians.” The remark was not prompted by anything current Hinkle said or did, or by any recent news coverage of the year-old comments.
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