Monmouth to offer 50-day, $50-million meet

Monmouth Park will host an elite 50-day summer meeting featuring an average of $1-million per day in purses under an agreement announced on Tuesday between the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority and the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association.

The pact lifts the Oceanport, New Jersey, racetrack into the country’s top echelon in purses, eclipsing the planned $723,000 per day in prize money slated by the New York Racing Association for the recently expanded 40-day Saratoga Race Course meeting in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The bold one-year deal, contingent upon the approval of state lawmakers and the New Jersey Racing Commission, cuts live racing from 141 dates and does not include a fall Thoroughbred meeting at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The revised 2010 Monmouth season will run from May 22 through September 6 with racing on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays as well as the Monday holidays of Memorial Day, July 5, and Labor Day. Twelve races are scheduled each day.