The 2025 Monmouth Park season is here, and the focus will be on quality racing and wagering from opening day May 10 through the end of the meet on Sept. 14. If you are not familiar with handicapping Monmouth on a day-to-day basis, there is still plenty of time to brush up on what it takes to pick winners at the Jersey Shore.

The 50-day Monmouth Park 2025 meet will race two or three days a week on Saturdays and Sundays plus Memorial Day, with Fridays being added from June to August. The headline day of the meet will be $1 million NYRA Bets Haskell Stakes Day on July 19 with a total of five graded stakes on the card. In all, Monmouth will feature 51 stakes races worth $7.8 million in purses.

Here is a brief handicapping overview for racing at the Monmouth Park summer race meet.

Monmouth Main Track Winning Profile

Dirt racing at Monmouth. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Monmouth dirt racing is defined by one predominant factor: Speed. Thanks to a lightning-fast track surface, tight turns, and a relatively short stretch, Monmouth Park very well might be one of the most speed-conducive tracks in the country. If you’re betting Monmouth and you want to make money consistently, you must learn to upgrade frontrunners and downgrade closers in your handicapping.

The Monmouth Park dirt front-end bias is apparent at all distances on the main track where it’s important to not fall too far back off the pace. If you’re not betting a speed horse, at least try to bet a horse with tactical speed.

In sprints run at 5 ½ to six furlongs, frontrunners racing on the pace or within a length of the lead at the first call won 44% of the 188 dirt sprints at the 2024 meet. Most of the remaining winners were stalking close-up between one and four lengths off the pace. Horses in the stalker category won 39% of the 188 dirt sprints. If you are looking for winning closers you should probably look elsewhere because late runners coming from four-plus lengths off the pace took only 32 of 188 races, just 17% of the dirt sprint winners at the meet. This was actually an improvement over 2023 when closers won 25 of the 195 dirt sprints, accounting for only 13%.

Late runners also show bad results in Monmouth dirt routes, which are mostly run at the distance of 1 mile and 70 yards. Closers from four or more lengths off the pace won 20 of the 123 dirt routes in 2025 to account for 16% of the races. The big difference between Monmouth’s dirt sprints and dirt routes is that it’s not quite as important to get the lead in routes. At Monmouth in 2024, horses racing on or close to the lead won 36% of the track’s 123 dirt routes. Stalkers racing between one and four lengths off the lead were the most successful segment of horses in these races, winning 48% of the dirt routes.

Post positions played fair in both dirt routes and dirt sprints in 2024, but even this presents horseplayers with a handicapping angle. Most Monmouth bettors downgrade horses from outside posts in dirt routes even though the recent stats don’t back that up. This reality versus the perception of bad outside posts means you can shop for bargain-priced overlays drawn on the outside.

Monmouth Turf Tips and Trends

Turf on the Jersey Shore. (Eclipse Sportswire)

The average field size in Monmouth turf routes in 2024 was 8.68 runners per race, which was down from 9.3 runners per race in 2023, but still very good for horseplayers. The Monmouth turf course played amazingly fair in 2024 in terms of both running styles and post positions.

The winners of Monmouth’s 104 turf routes in 2024 were pretty evenly distributed in terms of running styles. Speed horses won 34% of the races, stalkers won 37% of the races, and closers won 29% of the races.

Outside turf route horses were at a disadvantage at Monmouth in 2023, but not in 2024. Post position success rates were nearly even in 2024 with inside horses from posts 1-3 winning 35% of the turf routes, horses from middle posts 4-6 winning 38%, and horses from posts seven and out winning 29% of the races (up from 22% in 2023). When you consider that there are fewer starters from the outside posts, the fact that horses from posts 7 through 12 won 29% of the turf routes was impressive. Just like in dirt routes, handicappers can make a betting angle out of this if it holds true again in 2025 because Monmouth horseplayers often avoid betting outside posts in turf routes. This allows alert handicappers the chance to shop for overlays on the tote board on horses breaking from outside posts.

Monmouth turf sprints are all run at five furlongs or 5 ½ furlongs and tend to be ruled by speed horses. In 73 turf sprints run at Monmouth in 2024, 38 winners raced on or close to the lead (52%), 22 winners were stalkers (30%), and 14 winners were closers (19%). At the five-furlong distance, middle post positions 4-6 did by far the best.

Monmouth Park Top Jockeys

Jairo Rendon (Julia Sebastianelli/EQUI-PHOTO)

Expect 11-time Monmouth Park riding champion Paco Lopez to lead the Monmouth jockey standings. If he wins his 12^th title in 2025, it would be his seventh in a row and 11^th in the last 12 years. Last year, Lopez rode 76 winners at the meet (26%), which was 10 wins ahead of the second-leading rider Jairo Rendon who had 66 wins from the exact same number of mounts (23%). The extremely consistent Lopez also rode 76 winners at the 2023 Monmouth meet, which was 31 more winners than that season’s second-leading rider Samy Camacho (45 wins in 2023, 34 wins in 2024).

Other jockeys who will be in the mix at Monmouth Park include 2024 third-leading rider Samuel Marin (40 wins last year), Isaac Castillo (25 wins), and Jomar Torres (20 wins). Nik Juarez is coming off a subpar Monmouth season in 2024 when he tied for 12^th in the jockey standings with 12 wins (9%). Finally, don’t forget about a pair of notable veterans in the Monmouth Park jock’s room. “Jersey” Joe Bravo, a 13-time Monmouth leading rider, will ride selectively at the meet after winning aboard 18 of 106 mounts (17%) in 2024, and 61-year-old Jose Ferrer will return to the Jersey shore in 2025 after sitting out the 2024 meet. Ferrer won 49 races at the 2024-25 Tampa Bay Downs meet. Two seasons ago, when last seen at Monmouth Park in 2023, Ferrer won 14 races from 121 mounts for 12%.

Monmouth Park Trainers to Bet

Claudio Gonzalez (Bill Denver/EQUI-PHOTO)

Claudio Gonzalez won a neck-and-neck battle for the 2024 Monmouth Park training title with 34 wins (18%), which was just enough to hold off Mario Serey Jr. who won 32 times (18%). It was the third straight Monmouth title for Gonzalez who will now be the favorite to win his fourth meet training title in a row going into the 2025 season. At the 2023 meet two years ago, Gonzalez was the runaway leading trainer with 46 winners from 198 starters for 23%. Gonzalez, a mid-Atlantic region fixture, also owns 18 career Maryland training titles at Laurel Park and Pimlico.

Before Gonzalez’s arrival at the Jersey shore, Kelly Breen was annually in the hunt for the training title at Monmouth. Breen is coming off a good 2024 Monmouth season when he won 16 races from 84 starters (19%), which was third in the trainers’ standings and marked a positive rebound for him after a tough season in 2023 when he won at a rate of 13%. The other big winner at last year’s meet was Jorge Delgado, who placed third in the standings with 22 winners from only 91 starters for a big 24% win percentage.

More trainers you will be accustomed to seeing in the entries include Juan Carlos Avila, Kathleen O’Connell, Jose D’Angelo, Dan Ward, Lindsay Schultz, Teresa Pompay, Chuck Spina, and Mike Dini. These trainers can usually be counted on to win in the 10-15% range at the Monmouth meet. Maryland/Delaware trainer Diane Morici will also have a large string at Monmouth for the first time this season. High percentage winners to watch out for based on recent results include Jorge Duarte Jr. (5-for-23, 22% in 2024), Jose Lozano Sanchez (10-for-30, 33%), Carlos David (12-for-33, 36%), and Panagiotis Synnefias (13-for-42, 31%).

The other group of trainers you will want to watch out for are top trainers from the NYRA circuit, who routinely ship runners to Monmouth when they can’t find logical spots for them at Belmont at the Big A or Saratoga. Christophe Clement will have several stalls at Monmouth after invading with eight winners from 24 starters in 2024 (33%). Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher both have an annual presence at Monmouth. Pletcher won 10 races from 50 starters at the 2024 meet for a 20% win percentage. Brown had a down year at the Jersey shore in 2024 with a record of 8-for-53 (15%) after he had scored 21 wins from just 67 starters for 31% at the 2023 meet. George Weaver also shipped in and won at a high percentage in 2024 with 6 wins from 18 starters (33%).

The 2025 summer meet has arrived at Monmouth Park where you can always find fast times at the Jersey shore. Best of luck and enjoy the season!