by Ed DeRosa

The half-mile strip of land between the Belmont Park finish line and the one-mile pole is a tale of two turns.

In the morning, the area bustles with activity as horses enter the track for their daily exercise but by afternoon, the action is almost exclusively limited to horses either heading to the starting gate or galloping out after the races.

That dynamic will change on Saturday with the $1-million Belmont Stakes (G1), the 1 1/2-mile classic that uses the main track’s entire circumference. The track, the largest dirt track in North American Thoroughbred racing, is nicknamed “Big Sandy.”

Despite the right-hand side of the track being used only a few times a year for racing, New York Racing Association Director of Racing Surfaces John Passero said that the track maintenance program treats the track uniformly.

“We have a depth chart in the grandstand that displays the cushion of the track, and you can see we grade it evenly throughout,” Passero said. “We keep it the same all over because people train over it all morning, and the horses are still on it in the afternoon.”

Before joining NYRA in December 2004, Passero worked for the Maryland Jockey Club for 18 years, so preparing classic surfaces was not new to him when he got ready for his first Belmont in 2005.

“You always hear that tracks soup up the surface for the big day, but we do our work on Friday and keep it the same for Saturday unless something goes wrong with the weather,” Passero said.

Passero’s Belmont day will begin anywhere from 3:30-5 a.m. EDT depending on when he schedules training hours. Passero seals each of NYRA’s tracks every night to keep existing moisture in and any rain out.

“We can get some pretty sudden storms in New York,” Passero said. “I don’t like these tracks sloppy.”

The composition of the Belmont main track is 88% sand (with a mixture of medium and fine sands), 8% silt, and 4% clay.

Ed DeRosa is news editor of Thoroughbred Times