Cornell? nope
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Monday will be the new Wednesday at Aqueduct.
Beginning Jan. 13 and lasting 11 weeks through the end of March, Aqueduct will conduct live racing on Mondays and be dark Wednesdays. In January and March, Aqueduct will maintain a five-day race week – Thursdays through Mondays – while in February it will race four days a week – Fridays through Mondays. It is expected that in April Aqueduct will resume its normal Wednesday through Sunday racing schedule – save for April 13 (Palm Sunday) and April 20 (Easter Sunday), when the track must be closed by law.
The 2014 racing schedule – as well as the stakes schedule for only the Aqueduct meet – is expected to be approved on Wednesday at the New York Racing Association Board of Trustees meeting, to be held in Manhattan.
“As we prepare for re-privatization we want to test certain things in 2014 so that in 2015 we can include those tests that worked and not include those that didn’t work,” Chris Kay, NYRA president and CEO, said. “Rather than say, ‘We think this will work,’ it’s better for us to test it and see if it works.”
With the exception of Saratoga, NYRA has not raced regularly on Mondays since the early 1990s, when it was still conducting racing six days week. NYRA frequently opens on holiday Mondays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January and Presidents Day in February.
Kay said the idea to race Mondays was initiated by P.J. Campo – who recently resigned his post as NYRA director of racing/racing secretary to take a job at Gulfstream Park – in consultation with horsemen.
“Some of our horseman and P.J. both were saying, ‘Let’s give this a shot,’ ” Kay said. “There’s very little competition on Monday, it might work. Maybe it’ll work, or maybe there’s a reason why there is very little competition on Monday.”
Aqueduct’s primary competitor in the winter is Gulfstream Park which races Wednesday through Sunday, but, like most tracks, is open seven days a week for simulcasting. Tracks that race on Mondays in the winter include Parx, Beulah Park, and Turf Paradise.
Last year, NYRA cut six days of racing – four in February and two in March – due to a reduction in field size attributed in part to new medication rules that differed sharply from nearby states such as Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Many of those states are close to implementing rules that align with New York, giving Kay hope field size will rebound.
Kay said that in presenting 2014 racing dates the same 40-day meet will be sought for Saratoga.
“There is no suggested change in the number of days we run at Saratoga,” Kay said.
Kay’s bonuses
Monday marked five months since Kay took over as NYRA CEO and president. When hired, it was announced that his base salary would be $300,000 and that he would be eligible for up to $250,000 in bonuses based on certain performance metrics.
David Skorton, the NYRA chairman, in response to repeated requests from Daily Racing Form , broadly identified some of those metrics.
“The incentive component was developed using a ‘balanced scorecard’ that is based on key financial and non-financial objectives of NYRA,” Skorton wrote in an email. “The CEO’s performance will be reviewed annually against the goals set by the NYRA Board.”
Skorton wrote that financial items to be considered include revenue, operating results versus prior year, management of capital expenditures, and new revenue initiatives.
Under what he termed “quality,” Skorton indicated issues to be reviewed include return on marketing initiatives, ontrack customer experience, development and implementation of new technologies, leadership (i.e. develop strong management team and relationships with external constituencies), and improvements in equine and jockey safety.
I-
Stop scratching on holidays
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.
Just like Kevin McCaffrey President of Teamsters Local 707 which represents Nassau OTB employees
The New York Times Bob Dylan performing at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., in 2012.
To people who follow the pronouncements of Bob Dylan, his comment in a Rolling Stone interview
in September 2012 suggesting that American blacks could sense whether
whites had slave-master blood “just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and
the Serbs can sense Croatian blood” may have seemed just the sort of
vaporously impressionistic, emotionally pointed kind of thing that Mr.
Dylan has been known to say for decades.
But to the Representative Council of the Croatian Community and Institutions in France, an organization that looks after the interests of France’s 30,000 Croatians, those were fighting words. Now they have led to Mr. Dylan, who built his early career singing songs that denounced racism, being charged under a French law prohibiting “public insult and inciting hate.”
On Tuesday, Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Paris, told The Associated Press that the French government had filed preliminary charges. Mr. Dylan’s last encounter with the French government was just over two weeks ago, when he was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest prize.
The French government must have known that the charges were brewing when they gave Mr. Dylan the award: Vlatko Maric, the secretary general of the council, announced in November 2012 that his group had filed a complaint with the French government. That complaint led to the current charges.
“We have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer,” Mr. Maric told The Guardian. His objection, he explained, was that Mr. Dylan’s comment equated Croatian war criminals with all Croats.
What is the council seeking? Ivan Jurasinovic, a lawyer for the group, told The Associated Press that the organization was not seeking money or punishment, but hoped that Mr. Dylan, who he described as “a singer who is liked and respected in Croatia,” would apologize. A spokesman for Mr. Dylan said that the singer had no comment on the charges.
Beginning Jan. 13 and lasting 11 weeks through the end of March, Aqueduct will conduct live racing on Mondays and be dark Wednesdays. In January and March, Aqueduct will maintain a five-day race week – Thursdays through Mondays – while in February it will race four days a week – Fridays through Mondays. It is expected that in April Aqueduct will resume its normal Wednesday through Sunday racing schedule – save for April 13 (Palm Sunday) and April 20 (Easter Sunday), when the track must be closed by law.
The 2014 racing schedule – as well as the stakes schedule for only the Aqueduct meet – is expected to be approved on Wednesday at the New York Racing Association Board of Trustees meeting, to be held in Manhattan.
“As we prepare for re-privatization we want to test certain things in 2014 so that in 2015 we can include those tests that worked and not include those that didn’t work,” Chris Kay, NYRA president and CEO, said. “Rather than say, ‘We think this will work,’ it’s better for us to test it and see if it works.”
With the exception of Saratoga, NYRA has not raced regularly on Mondays since the early 1990s, when it was still conducting racing six days week. NYRA frequently opens on holiday Mondays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January and Presidents Day in February.
Kay said the idea to race Mondays was initiated by P.J. Campo – who recently resigned his post as NYRA director of racing/racing secretary to take a job at Gulfstream Park – in consultation with horsemen.
“Some of our horseman and P.J. both were saying, ‘Let’s give this a shot,’ ” Kay said. “There’s very little competition on Monday, it might work. Maybe it’ll work, or maybe there’s a reason why there is very little competition on Monday.”
Aqueduct’s primary competitor in the winter is Gulfstream Park which races Wednesday through Sunday, but, like most tracks, is open seven days a week for simulcasting. Tracks that race on Mondays in the winter include Parx, Beulah Park, and Turf Paradise.
Last year, NYRA cut six days of racing – four in February and two in March – due to a reduction in field size attributed in part to new medication rules that differed sharply from nearby states such as Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Many of those states are close to implementing rules that align with New York, giving Kay hope field size will rebound.
Kay said that in presenting 2014 racing dates the same 40-day meet will be sought for Saratoga.
“There is no suggested change in the number of days we run at Saratoga,” Kay said.
Kay’s bonuses
Monday marked five months since Kay took over as NYRA CEO and president. When hired, it was announced that his base salary would be $300,000 and that he would be eligible for up to $250,000 in bonuses based on certain performance metrics.
David Skorton, the NYRA chairman, in response to repeated requests from Daily Racing Form , broadly identified some of those metrics.
“The incentive component was developed using a ‘balanced scorecard’ that is based on key financial and non-financial objectives of NYRA,” Skorton wrote in an email. “The CEO’s performance will be reviewed annually against the goals set by the NYRA Board.”
Skorton wrote that financial items to be considered include revenue, operating results versus prior year, management of capital expenditures, and new revenue initiatives.
Under what he termed “quality,” Skorton indicated issues to be reviewed include return on marketing initiatives, ontrack customer experience, development and implementation of new technologies, leadership (i.e. develop strong management team and relationships with external constituencies), and improvements in equine and jockey safety.
I-
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> 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.
Just like Kevin McCaffrey President of Teamsters Local 707 which represents Nassau OTB employees
Bob Dylan Charged With ‘Inciting Hate’ Under French Law
By ALLAN KOZINNThe New York Times Bob Dylan performing at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., in 2012.But to the Representative Council of the Croatian Community and Institutions in France, an organization that looks after the interests of France’s 30,000 Croatians, those were fighting words. Now they have led to Mr. Dylan, who built his early career singing songs that denounced racism, being charged under a French law prohibiting “public insult and inciting hate.”
On Tuesday, Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Paris, told The Associated Press that the French government had filed preliminary charges. Mr. Dylan’s last encounter with the French government was just over two weeks ago, when he was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest prize.
The French government must have known that the charges were brewing when they gave Mr. Dylan the award: Vlatko Maric, the secretary general of the council, announced in November 2012 that his group had filed a complaint with the French government. That complaint led to the current charges.
“We have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer,” Mr. Maric told The Guardian. His objection, he explained, was that Mr. Dylan’s comment equated Croatian war criminals with all Croats.
What is the council seeking? Ivan Jurasinovic, a lawyer for the group, told The Associated Press that the organization was not seeking money or punishment, but hoped that Mr. Dylan, who he described as “a singer who is liked and respected in Croatia,” would apologize. A spokesman for Mr. Dylan said that the singer had no comment on the charges.
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