by Ayers Ratliff, for Northfield Park

Northfield, OH — Northfield Park, Ohio’s leading racetrack in pari-mutuel handle, both on-track and export, is offering live harness racing four nights a week to start the 2017 racing year. From Jan. through Sept., racing is on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.

The exceptions to this schedule are the addition of three Sundays, Jan. 1, May 28 and Sept. 3. Also, there is no live racing on Memorial Day or Labor Day, which are both Mondays.

Beginning in October, 2017, Northfield adds Sunday evenings and will race five nights a week until the end of the year. Friday (Dec. 22) will replace Christmas Eve Sunday, while Friday (Dec. 29) will replace racing on Christmas Monday.

Northfield Park’s marquee racing events are as follows: $200,000 Battle of Lake Erie Saturday (June 3); $175,000 Cleveland Trotting Classic Saturday (July 1); $300,000 Carl Milstein Memorial and $50,000 Myron Charna President’s Pace Saturday (Aug. 12) and the $125,000 Courageous Lady Saturday (Oct. 14).

The $125,000 (est.) Summit County Fair Stakes, featuring many of Ohio’s best freshman and sophomore trotters and pacers, will be held on Saturday (July 29).

Each of the 222 live racing nights carries a first race post time of 6:00 p.m. Northfield Park is open daily from 12 noon until after midnight for simulcasting action from tracks across the United States, Canada and Australia.