Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem for April 21, 2025

Jason discusses two tracks that open up this week, Mountaineer and Thistledown. 

A good Monday morning to you all! We had the holiday off of racing on Sunday, and it was kind of nice to sit and do this column during the daytime as opposed to writing in the evening after the races at Tampa.

Today is opening day at Thistledown, which will kick off a 100-day meet that goes until mid-October. Last night was opening night at Mountaineer, which is just a 100-mile drive from Thistledown. Twice in my life I’ve done the Thistledown/Mountaineer double and wanted to share some stories and thoughts on these two long meets that kick off this week. 

Both of these trips I made were back in 2006 and 2007 while working at River Downs. I know Thistledown has undergone a big remodel with the casino addition, so I’m not sure how much it still looks or feels like it did back then. They used to run a super-long meet; I think it was close to 200 days a year back in the early and mid-2000s. Like a lot of tracks, they’ve trimmed their dates and now run an even 100 days, which is still a pretty sizable meet by today’s standards. 

I remember walking up to the Big T the first time and thinking it looked like an old Sears factory. It was huge and brick and looked nothing like any racetrack I’d seen before. I remember the white fence all the way around the backside and the turns and also the long and confusing walk up to Matt Hook’s booth. I remember walking in, and Matt was practicing his putting between races with one of those little machines that send your ball back to you when you make the putt. 

Speaking of Matt, interestingly enough, both he and Mountaineer announcer Peter Berry were at their same tracks back in 2006 and 2007 that they are at today. I know Matt was gone from Thistledown for a while, but to me he’ll always be the voice of Cleveland racing just because he was there when I first started watching the races from there. Same with Peter at Mountaineer. I can’t imagine someone else calling the races there as to me his voice is a big part of “the mountain.”  I think it’s very cool that both those guys have put together great legacies in their respective tracks. 

When I visited Mountaineer for the first time, they were nice enough to comp me a room at the hotel. In fact, that was probably my first racetrack freebie! They used to have wagering machines at the end of the hallways in the hotel so you could bet the races with your voucher from there and they had the RTN signal in the rooms. The hotel was beyond the backstretch but not too far. I got to spend a few races in the handicapping TV studio with Mark and Nancy, who had a big cult following back then. I think Mark still does now, but back then it was a two-person crew. They were super-welcoming, and it was so surreal to chat with these folks I’d watched on television for a long time. I’d say from 2004 to 2009 I watched the Mountain most nights and loved the product. 

The thing that stuck out to me about Peter’s booth at Mountaineer was the huge lightpole that directly blocked his view of the turn for home, which is arguably the most important time to be identifying the horses because they’re running right at you for a few seconds, and it’s hard enough to see the silks or saddle towels at that point. Also, the morning after my first visit to Mountaineer, I lost a contact lens down the sink in the hotel. I had exactly one pair of contacts and ended up having the maintenance guy come in and take off the collection pipe below the sink and wouldn’t you know it, we found the lens. I drove back to River Downs that morning and called a nine-race card with both eyes working!  

This is a cool time of year with so many tracks opening up in the next couple weeks. Churchill Downs will get the most attention of course, but there’s a lot of fun little spots that are about ready to kick off for the spring and summer. 

Have a good week!