Monmouth Park is one of the tracks I cut my teeth on when I first got into racing. The track dates all the way back to the late 1870s and there’s plenty of history here to compliment the great racing from the Jersey Shore. They’ve got the main track, a one mile dirt oval, that typically handles 6 furlong and 1/14 mile runs. They also have a seven furlong turf course that has hosted some really solid races and they typically alternate between the hedge and the portable rail.
They stream all their races live for free on the internet which is geat for those of us betting with European sportsbooks that may or may not offer live streaming. I’m a Paddy Power player myself and they always offer racing from Monmouth Park although they don’t stream live. No bother for me on that though.
Monmouth is typically the first track to get underway in the United States with races kicking off at 12:50 Eastern Time (before 10 am out on the west coast).
Weekends at Monmouth Park racetrack generally feature races in the $25,000-$50,000 range for allowance races and $30,000-$40,000 claimers. The weekdays usually feature lower-grade competition that runs the $10,000 corridor for claiming.
The biggest Stakes race of the year at Monmouth Park is the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational. Rachel Alexandra put in quite a performance this year and the Haskell runs in early August. You’ll also see lots of attention paid to the Grade 1 United Nations Stakes in addition to the Grade 2 Molly Pitcher. There’s a pile of Grade 3 races at Monmouth Park with the Boiling Springs Handicap, the Oceanport Stakes, the Matchmaker Stakes and the Salvator Mile Handicap to name just a few.
Brad Thomas is one of my favourite features at Monmouth Park and some of his selections have put more than a few bucks in my pocket. You can recognize Brad from his old-man-in-Florida-retirement-sunglasses. He’s a real solid handicapper and I find that sometimes the people working the simulcast shows can really fuck you over with bogus selections (Tampa Bay Downs, I’m looking in your direction) but I find Brad can really unearth a gem and if he tips anything at over 6/1 I’m usually all over it.
Monmouth Park Racetrack’s website has some great features and there’s also plenty of different activities happening at this track. Their annual crab cake cookoff looks like a tasty event (I’m known to enjoy a crabcake) and they also do a really cool event where people run a mile on the track to raise money for retired horses. I think that’s a great concept and I’d like to see that type of thing happening at racecourses everywhere.
One of the defining features of Monmouth Park is its reputation for favouring speed and more particularly early speed. If your horse is a closer then he’d better be an incredible one because if he isn’t in the leading four coming into the back stretch he’s likely in some real trouble. This is one of the reasons’ why Mine That Bird-owner Chip Woolley declined to run him in the 2009 Haskel Invitational- his horse closes late and the pace at Monmouth would be working against them the whole time.
Monmouth Park may not carry the mystique of Saratoga or the glamour of Santa Anita, but it’s a great track that is always bettor-friendly. It can be a bit more unpredictable but it’s a great course that has long meets, live streaming and an above-average simulcast.
