Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem Aug. 6, 2026

A good Thursday to you all! Hope everyone had a good week. What a wild week in the racing world with the announcement of the Thoroughbred Championship Series along with the rescheduling of the Preakness Stakes (G1). I think we all knew changes were coming to the historic set of races after the last couple of Derby (G1) winners bypassed the Preakness, but still, there was a big shift in the racing world with these two announcements.  

There’s been plenty of chat about both topics all week, including from me on the podcast, so I won’t bore you again with my thoughts. Instead, because it’s West Virginia Derby week I wanted to talk a bit about Mountaineer and revisit my first trip to “The Mountain.” This story is partly influenced by seeing Penn National announcer Nathan Klein at Colonial the other day and knowing that he drove like five hours for a day of racing just to turn back around and go to Penn National. When you’re young, those random racetrack road trips are so much fun.  

My first visit to Mountaineer was in 2006, my first summer calling races at River Downs. We ran a bit of an odd schedule at River with Mondays and Wednesdays being our days off. So we didn’t have a full “weekend.” So I decided in July of that summer to take off on a Monday morning, head up to Columbus and then go east to Wheeling and then straight up to Mountaineer. Chester, West Virginia is a pretty rural area even though it’s less than an hour from Pittsburgh and maybe just a touch more to Cleveland. I remember pulling in and all there really was to the town was the casino and racetrack.  

Mountaineer in the mid 2000s was on fire. They were handling $2 million a night and ha d overflowing fields. They were one of the first racinos and their purses were pretty big compared to the Ohio and Pennsylvania tracks it resided closest to. I stayed at the hotel on the property and the first thing I see when getting off the elevator is a SAM machine for making bets at the end of the hallway. And Mountaineer’s in-house signal was on the television in the room. Was this heaven? No, it was Chester, West Virginia.  

I got to meet Mark Patterson and Nancy McMichael between races on the set of their show. They were the first handicappers on a track signal that I remember doing really long form discussion about the races and they had a pretty rabid fanbase. I think nighttime tracks sometimes lend themselves more to getting a strong following, but that’s another conversation. I got to go upstairs and meet Peter Berry and watch him call a couple races and he couldn’t have been nicer. It was great having Peter on the podcast this week to talk about the Mountain as it really is a special track.  

The only hiccup in that first visit to Mountaineer was the next morning I dropped my contact lens down the drain in the sink. After a while the maintenance man was able to open up the pipes below and rinse the lens out as it fell back onto the sink. What a relief! I kept walking around the hotel room, squinting my one eye shut and trying to see if I’d be able to call races with one eye, because we had races later that afternoon at River Downs. Thank goodness I didn’t have to, although years later I did have a contact lens issue and had to call all day with one eye, it was annoying but went totally fine.  

I got to go back to Mountaineer last summer for the West Virginia Derby and it was a blast. People were tailgating all along the road that runs behind the track. It was very festive and the community really supported the day. Worth attending if you’re in the area.  

Have a great weekend everyone!