Rick Schosberg starts Monday at 4:15 am when he arrives at Belmont Park to train his horses and help nearly 600 backstretch workers who call home to stay safe during the coronavirus era.

The race will finally return to Belmont on Wednesday, but the work of training and caring for horses never stops, even when the pandemic begins to close the country in March.

“This is a totally new world out there, but I think everyone really shows an incentive to do everything they can to show that there is power and the governor’s office that we are really serious about making sure everyone stays healthy while we will do business everyday, “Schosberg, veteran trainer and chair of the Horsemen’s New York Thoroughbred Association backstretch / safety committee, told The Post on Friday.

“I think the backstretch community and all organizations, working together in one step for one single initiative, not only helped us so far but also moved forward, it shows we can communicate and we can work together on all initiatives to improve our industry. As our governor said, we don’t want to go back to where we were before, we want to be better. “

So Schosberg gets up early. Monday is the distribution day for masks and gloves and other personal protective equipment, and Schosberg is part of a group that helps facilitate it. He checked the barns around his barn and made sure everything was complete for the next week.

When he gets to the warehouse, it’s time to check the temperature. In addition to what is done for anyone who enters through Gate 6, each trainer now has a thermal thermometer and is asked to measure the temperature of all working staff. If the barn has 40 horses, there may be eight grooms and eight hot pedestrians and five sports racers and assistant coaches to check in, each playing an important role in the day-to-day care of the race horses, no matter whether there is a race to run or not.

“We run our business in new, more creative ways,” Schosberg said. “Like when a horse returns from the track, instead of having three people in the stall, there are two people in the stall. So they stay far apart. … And then the groom will drive the horse into the barn or go out to the washing area for aids. the road was hot, so they stayed far apart, and then during the washing period, there was a lot of safe distance between the two people while they were still keeping their faces covered.

“So it’s a little different, it looks a little different, but it works.”

Working in a warehouse can be a dirty job, so washing your hands early and often has become part of the daily routine for the groom. Now there is even more cleaning – everything from pitchforks and rakes to pens is cleaned and removed with either bleach products or washing isopropyl alcohol every morning, Schosberg said.

It took the efforts of the team from NYTHA, the New York Racing Association, the Backstretch Employee Service Team and the New York Race Track Chaplaincy – led by “heroic” captain Humberto Chavez, Schosberg said – to adapt to the new normal, which began by establishing quarantine facilities when COVID-19 start attacking the country. The Belmont backstretch community did indeed lose one of its belongings in April, when a 63-year-old groom, Martin Zapata, died of complications from a coronavirus.

But Schosberg said health protocols and the use of protective equipment had helped make a “big difference” in keeping people safe, paving the way for Wednesday’s opening race day.

“I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to find out the fact that this thing works if it’s used properly,” Schosberg said. “If we are going to reach our goal, to get back racing and hopefully someday with our owners to be able to see their horses and maybe a limited size crowd at some point in the future, don’t take our feet off the accelerator. “