Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for July 3, 2025

A good Thursday morning to you all! 

Writing today from beautiful Richmond, Virginia and all settled into my place for this upcoming season at Colonial Downs. The start of a new season is always kind of a strange time around the track for me. I’m kinda lucky in that there isn’t really a ton for me to do in regards to the new season starting other than the normal prep work required for announcing races. But walking around Colonial on Wednesday it’s pretty cool to see all the different folks and tasks it takes to get up and running. 

I saw the two track superintendents, one for dirt, one for turf, both going out on their respective surfaces while it was pouring rain out. The turf course looks ridiculously lush and beautiful as it always has since I started in 2019. There are a couple new entry points for the starting gates to the outer turf course this year to aid in proper run-up distances for turf routes. A group of seven or so people were assembling the inner turf railing throughout the day. Each week the inner rail and the outer turf rail will be moved back 12 feet each for the first few weeks. Then generally back to their 0 feet spots for Arlington Million Day. If you ever get a chance to watch a race at Colonial watch how many people there are for the gate crew. There’s all the assistant starters but also a whole group that puts wood pallets down on the ground so the gate doesn’t drive over the grass itself and cause damage. We use the turf course a lot during this meet, so it’s so important to save every inch of it we can. It’s something to see all the manpower needed to maintain those courses, turf and dirt. 

Later in the morning I went to the race office to see the draw going off. Most of the agents do the draw via Zoom nowadays, so they aren’t quite as hectic and exciting to watch as they used to be. My first summer working in racing, 2006, I remember seeing all the agents packed around the counter of the race office as the racing secretary and assistant drew the races. There were so many jabs and barbs thrown by the agents at each other and even saw a fist fight happen one time shortly after the draw.  

The TV folks have already moved in and all the mic and speaker checks will be done over the next several days. The tote people will make sure all the machines are ready to take bets. There was dozens of tellers doing training in advance of the season. Most of the jockeys will come into town for the race days as I’m sure most of them are riding in other spots around the country this weekend. In fact our defending leading jockey Ben Curtis will ride Magnitude in Saturday's Iowa Derby before he descends on Virginia for the upcoming season. 

It’s an exciting time of year for us here in Virginia, and I’ll certainly discuss the meet more as we draw closer and of course when the big races come up. Until then, we’ll look forward to Wednesday and hope to have everything prepared and ready for the season. 

Good luck this weekend and have a happy fourth of July!