Early starts to warm hearts of Big M faithful
At 0h03, on February 13, 2026 • By Dave Little, Meadowlands Media Relations
The extreme cold temperatures that have plagued the New York metropolitan area for the last month have wreaked havoc with live action at The Meadowlands, forcing the cancellation of five of the last six race cards.
Thankfully, for management, horsemen and fans, this weekend (Feb. 13-14) will see temperatures that will be right around the seasonal average on Friday and five degrees or so above that on Saturday, so, for the first time since Jan. 9-11, there will be a complete race week conducted at the mile oval.
“The cold weather, not to mention the big Sunday snowstorm in late January, has really made it tough on us at The Meadowlands,” said track Chief Operating Officer and General Manager Jason Settlemoir.
“Hopefully, the extreme weather is now behind us.
“We regret having lost the race cards we did due to the cold, but we always put the safety of our horsemen and equine athletes first. These are tough decisions to make, and they aren’t always popular, but we canceled when we did because we thought it was best to keep people and horses out of harm’s way.”
There was one good thing that happened while frozen-tundra-like temps put the area in a deep chill.
When there was racing on Jan. 24 and Feb. 6, post time was shifted 20 minutes, from 6:20 p.m. to 6 p.m. This worked well. So well, in fact, that on that next-to-last Saturday in January, a 2026 track- and industry-best $3,379,086 was wagered on the 14-race card, so The Big M is going to make a change for the time being.
Effective Friday (Feb. 13), post time at The Meadowlands will be 6 p.m. for 11 weeks, ending Saturday, April 25, when, thereafter, the first race will return to 6:20 p.m.
Racing will be conducted on the usual Friday-Saturday basis.
“We saw that the early start did not have a negative impact on business, so, for the remainder of the winter, we will go with the early post time,” said Settlemoir, before adding with a laugh, “and hope that all of the groundhogs and whatever other rodents said there will be six more weeks of winter were wrong.”
