While the Breeders’ Cup board is eyeing Santa Anita as a permanent site for the year-end championships that have rotated among 10 different tracks over its first 26 years, the New York Racing Association has countered that idea by pitching for the Breeders’ Cup to be held at Belmont Park in 2011.
“NYRA firmly believes that the Breeders’ Cup event should rotate among three or four racetracks . . . and that Belmont Park should be included,” NYRA chairman C. Steven Duncker and president Charles Hayward wrote in a letter to Breeders’ Cup chairman William S. Farish Jr. “Further, NYRA believes that moving the Breeders’ Cup to a single location, particularly to southern California and Santa Anita’s artificial surface, imposes a severe hardship on horsemen and racing customers.”
NYRA’s current fiscal woes would not be an obstacle to hosting the Breeders’ Cup next year, Hayward said.
“We think NYRA is going to be around and running races in 2011,” he said.
The Breeders’ Cup will be run at Churchill Downs this Nov. 5-6.