Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Dec. 16, 2024

A good Monday morning to you all! Good to be back with you after a battle with Influenza Type A last week. Knocked me for a loop. 

Back in September, most of the summertime tracks usually close out their meets. We say goodbye to all the Colonials, Saratogas, Del Mars, and so many others. The two that seem to hang on until the very end of the year are Mountaineer and Woodbine. Woodbine wrapped up this weekend and while I know they had some difficult trials over the last few weeks, it always marks a bit of a change of seasons for me as a race-watching fan. 

When I worked at Portland Meadows, my boss was from the Toronto area. I truly hadn’t watched much Woodbine at all in my life, and he would of course watch it every day it was on. 

He decided that he wanted our little track to have a radio show, and he asked me if I wanted to be the host. I’d never done anything like that before, but I figured, why not. He told me he’d even get me my first guest, and so he reached out to his Woodbine connections, and longtime jockey James McAleney became the first person I ever got to interview. 

Now, I’d never heard of James because as I said, I really didn’t watch Woodbine. This was back in 2008, and so I started to do some research and found that the guy had won a lot of races and at the time was in the middle of his best year in the saddle. He’d end up with just a few bucks shy of $8 million in earnings that year. And I’d never heard of him – LOL. And there my Woodbine fandom began. 

First off, I love that they still run a long meet. As a horseplayer or someone that works in the industry, finding some place to race more than six months consecutively has become a very elusive thing. Sure there’s a handful of spots, but not as many as there used to be. 

I love that Woodbine starts in the snow, runs through the heat, and usually ends in the snow as well. The last few weeks of this meet are some of my favorites because inevitably you get everyone wanting to run once more before the season ends. It’s still one of those circuits where a lot of the horses are given the off-season time off to just be horses. We used to see that a lot at Emerald Downs, and there were always a lot of horses who ran very long careers, and I think that was part of the reason why. 

Speaking of Emerald, its longtime former announcer Robert Geller just finished (I believe) his 10th season at Woodbine. I’m a biased Robert fan because he was such an incredible mentor and friend to me when I was getting started, but I love getting to see him call races on a big stage like Woodbine. You can try to find someone who reads a race or how a horse is traveling during a race better than him, but you might be looking for a while. I was lucky enough to get an interview for the Woodbine job when it opened up back in 2015, and I remember telling a colleague “they really should hire Robert Geller, he’d be perfect for Woodbine.”  I think I was right and so were they.  Cheers Bobby G. 

A few of the Woodbine horses will head south here to Florida, but many will just get some well-deserved time off. Between the synthetic and two turf courses, I think Woodbine offers a very interesting product. I wish they’d get rid of the silly 20-cent denominations on most of their exotics, but other than that, I think it’s a very good signal. See them back in the spring!