Keeneland: Part 3 of 3

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:54:51 -0400

As I woke up Thursday, for the final day of of my three-day pilgrimage, I grew excited for the afternoon’s card, the culmination of which was the Grey Goose Bewitch Stakes (G3), a 1-1/2 mile turf race for fillies and mares 4 years old and up. But before that there was a full day of racing, lined most notably with two races full of promising 2-year olds.

Races for two year-olds, like they were for John Sanford (namesake of the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga), are for me the most enjoyable. For it is while watching a race of green juveniles that I am able to think dreamily about tomorrow’s stars, next year’s Derby trail. These races, and the paddock scene before hand, are never light on entertainment and suspense. A horse bucks in the paddock, and drags a scared trainer along by the reins. The trainer’s feet escalate to a run, so his eager colt does not pull him into a diving slide for home. The horse’s owners, an elderly couple dressed in neatly-pressed Burberry suits, stare though their bifocals aghast, as their $200,000 “investment” pronounces his refusal to play the agreeable champion. It is a tragic comedy you can see unfold on almost a daily basis for only a few dollars at a racetrack near you.

As the starting gate breaks, horses dart in fifty different directions, like a kindergarten classroom of children, whom have gotten into a misplaced box of Red Bull. A horse or two stay planted in the gate for a few seconds, squatters in a student protest. Around a turn a horse swings uncontrollably wide. Down the stretch a champion of tomorrow emerges well-clear of the field needing only the push of a button. Nothing surprises me when a herd of ripe 2 year-olds make for the gate in their debut.

A card with two races chock-full of expensive 2 year-olds is part of what makes Keeneland unique. Keeneland is similar to Saratoga, but few other places in the American racing landscape, in that racing at Keeneland forms a cross-pollination with the sales activities that take place on its grounds throughout the year. Owners, who recently purchased a high-priced 2-year old in training, or months ago a yearling, want desperately to see that new horse on the track. If there are not enough prominent races in which owners can run their new purchases, this would adversely impact thoroughbred auctions. So tracks that house auctions, like Keeneland and Saratoga do, understand the importance of offering ample races for juvenile horses and eager owners alike; and consequently, are also both tracks that are good bets to go to for the race fan who is trying to ascertain tomorrow’s star.

In the 5th race at Keeneland, a potential star of tomorrow, a debuting two-year old named China, put in one of the most eye-catching performances of the entire day. China, a son of Tale of the Cat, whose notable offspring include Tale of Ekati, was a March foal. He was in turn purchased at the Keeneland September ’08 sale for $110,000. But it was not long until China became a winner for his owners, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith. Todd Pletcher trained, China worked out sharply into his racing debut. With Velazquez aboard the young colt moved down the stretch rather handily. As his nose hit the wire in first, I dug deep into the far repositories of my mind, hoping to encounter some future vision of China elevating yet further to 3 year-old greatness. Will this be a star of tomorrow?

As the day wore on, and the card marched towards the day’s main event, I went in search of a quiet table, where I could get off my feet and drink a cold draft beer. Three days of running to and from the paddock to the grandstand had started to take its toll on my legs. I was ready for a hose down, and a comfortable pile of hay. Instead, I found a shaded, outdoor patio area along the north backside of the grandstand, which faced a large television screen that ran alongside the front of the ground’s outer fence. The patio was two-tiered, the top tier covered in shade coming off the grandstand, both tiers were covered in large, circular, white wrought-iron tables, and surrounded with exhausted patrons.

The upcoming race’s paddock analysis loudly echoed across the cafe patio, something I readily welcomed. One of my great frustrations with most tracks is that you can barely hear the sound system at certain times, and from certain points of the track. At Keeneland, this is not so. After all, Keeneland is a horse fan’s track. Every horse fan wants to hear the paddock analysis. They certainly want to hear the call; no matter where they may be sitting. And Keeneland gives the fans what they want. The devil is in the details. Keeneland understands this.

For the Grey Goose Stakes, I settled on a 5 year-old mare from Smart Strike out of a Pleasant Colony mare, Martinique, named Communique. Communique was the race’s defending champion. The race’s favorite was a recent winner at 1-1/2 mile, Dress Rehearsal, who I felt strongly had gotten bet down too far. As the horses hit the mile pole, after having gone the mile in 1:45:42, a wave of dopamine shot through my brain (if only someone could bottle that feeling). Communique was a few clear of a fading Dress Rehearsal.

But then out of nowhere, the Jonathan Sheppard-trained Winter View, with Julien Leparoux aboard made a sweeping last-to-first move on the far outside to blow by my dear Communique, dashing my hopes of pecuniary privileges on this day. As far as my handicapping was concerned, the race was a fitting end to my three days at the windows. As Leparoux was getting interviewed, I cursed myself in anger. How had I wrongly ignored this tandem, which has made me so much money over the last couple of years (I was strongly behind the great Forever Together in the Breeder’s Cup Filly & Mare Turf)? My betrayal of the jockey genius Leparoux left me a bit nauseous. It was the Sheppard and Leparoux’s third, count ‘em three, stakes victory of the Keeneland meet. Winter View’s 9/2 odds stared down at my tired body from the massive screen before me with a relentless scorn. But with my tickets cast sheepishly on the ground at my feet, worthless and caught in a late afternoon breeze, I at least took consolation in the fact that it was not winning tickets I had come seeking. Enlightenment, I knew, would never come with a mere, late-day score.

As I pulled away from Keeneland, I noticed in the distance a black water tower. Only in horse country, I thought, are the water towers painted the same, tarry-black as the surrounding horse farm’s fences. Driving on, I thought about the guy at Starbucks, born and raised in Lexington, and who this spring had gone to Keeneland, like I had two day’s before, for the very first time. I wondered what he had thought upon seeing the sun-dappled paddock, the white gleaming sycamore, the ivy colored limestone, the clubhouse lawn, the track infield with its untouched, rolling hills. Had he gone to the track kitchen? Met Phyllis? Been to “the soul of Keeneland”? Probably not. But then again, the track is a different place for all of us. That is what makes it so special. That is why the track draws a New Yorker like me out into horse country, on a pilgrimage, in search of something, unsure of exactly what. I hope my friend found what he was looking for.

Sources:

2008 Media Guide. Keeneland Association, Inc.

“A Proposal for the Establishment of A Model Racetrack at Keeneland.” 1935. Keeneland Association, Inc.

The Keeneland Legacy. Video.

Keeneland: Part 2 of 3

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:26:06 -0400

With Wednesday, the previous day’s rain and clouds turned to sunshine. In the morning, I decided to take in some morning workouts. For a racetrack pilgrim, morning workouts are a revelatory experience. Spending mornings watching the happenings on a fog-covered racetrack, from a perch in an abandoned grandstand is an experience that offers clarity. When I arrived at the rail, steaming cup of coffee in hand, the cement where I stood was still bathed in a cold morning shade, for the sun had not yet risen above the grandstand. I was wearing only my summer suit. Further down to my right past the finish line, I noticed a few other rail birds burrowed in big jackets.

There were horses and stable ponies everywhere on the main track. The occasional racer working its way along the inside rail at a feverish pace. I was watching how the horses were switching leads. Standing there, watching horses run by me one-by-one or in a pair, rather than in a thunderous herd as they do in a race, it easy to admire each, unique specimen before your eyes. I began in my head trying to put into words the beauty of each horse as they breezed past. Dainty. The worn look of a steelworker taking a cigarette break on a Wednesday afternoon. The rhythm of a coxman, calling time as his crew digs their paddles into the water in perfect unison, their boat gliding down the Schuylkill River.

I took a break from this writerly exercise, and instead took my first long look at the Keeneland infield. Along the homestretch, just on the other side of the inside rail, stands a large limestone tote board and large replay and race monitors, powered by Keeneland’s unique Trakus technology, which during a live race allows you to see the position of every horse in the race at any given moment, courtesy of sensor chips placed in the saddle cloth of each horse. From these tracking devices, it is also possible for Keeneland to provide three-dimensional, video race replays. At Keeneland, if your horse is out of the top 3 or 4, you don’t have to wonder where in the pack, off-the-pace your monetary hopes lie. Behind the tote board, emerge three flag poles like tall spears: the American flag, the Kentucky flag, and on the third pole both the green and yellow Keeneland flag and that of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. A racetrack’s holy trinity: Country, State, Racing Affiliation.

Off the back-right corner of the tote board, the infield begins a long descent into a deep, grassy ravine, at the bottom of which sits a row of five, small trees. The natural, hilly infield is a reminder that the racetrack was not only built within horse country, but also literally on top of horse country. The infield’s bucolic, untouched look serves as a reminder that the oval, Polytrack racing surface was literally slapped on top of a horse farm and its rolling hills of bluegrass.

In the distance, just beyond the backstretch, small planes take off and land at the Lexington airport. A strip of mud the color of coffee with cream streaks through the landscape, demarcating where a new runway is set to be paved. The strip of mud cutting across the pristine green hills horrifying, like a clean, bleeding cut across the face of a beautiful actress.

On the backside of the grandstand, almost directly in line with the eighth pole, sits the Keeneland paddock. As I walked out of the Grandstand, past empty betting windows, and a group of three Keeneland employees talking in Spanish, a low-hanging morning sun drowning the paddock in a warm sunlight, brought welcome relief from the cold, shady patch of cement along the rail.

The paddock at Keeneland has an ordered, sensible construction, delineated on its northeast end by a row of limestone saddling barns. The paddock stretches from the saddling barns into an elongated oval which reaches back towards the grandstand’s south entrance. A large, sole, leaf-less sycamore tree separates the main paddock from another oval walking area, set up presumably for the wealthier patrons sitting in the upper clubhouse to get a better view of the horses. The sycamore tree’s white branches looked almost silver in the gleaming, morning light.

The grandstand’s ivy-covered blocks of limestone, which alternate in color between a traditional, whitish limestone, and that of a gold-tinged hue. The silver sycamore. The whole scene bathed in a morning solitude. The faint hum of a plane taking off in the distance. The chirping of birds in the courtyard where I stood. It all made me pause. I couldn’t help but to think that in the simplicity of this moment that my pilgrimage was perhaps already partly complete, that maybe I had already found what I was looking for.

I was growing hungry, so I decided to head to the only place where one can get some breakfast on the grounds of Keeneland, The Track Kitchen. The Track Kitchen sits at the end of a long, spine of barns that run from the paddock, and away from the track. Along the row of white, ordered wooden barns, are parking spots with the names of their owners: T. Pletcher, B. Mott, M. Maker, etc. The name tags are a subtle reminder that for the sport’s biggest names and for so many more, Keeneland is above all a place of work. A place to toil and earn a living. A place to make a mark on a sport before its too late. A place where anyone whose anyone in the sport has their own parking spot.

The Track Kitchen is a place of understated beauty. Linoleum floors, white walls, and long plastic imitation tables. It is set up like a cafeteria. You slide along with a tray, where through a glass window is an array of culinary options. My eyes bigger than my appetite, I loaded my tray with eggs, sausage, a biscuit, an orange, some more coffee, potato hash, and grits. Total: $8.43. The oversized breakfast made me realize I would quickly become obese if I lived in horse country. As I devoured my country breakfast, I began to study the afternoon’s card, hoping winners would emerge from the rubble of information.

From the Track Kitchen, I had a treat in store. A friend, Sandy Stuart, was going to give me a tour of the horse farms in Lexington. Sandy is a native of Lexington, and since graduating from Hampden-Sydney College has made his living in the horse business. He and his dad partner to run Bluegrass Thoroughbred Services and The Stallion Company. Sandy, as I found on my tour, is a repository of local knowledge. A farm, with the insights of Sandy, becomes not just another farm, but a story. It becomes human. The owners, the ups and downs, the guiding mission, its star stallion, its manager, all become a set of backstories, which together lend life to an otherwise stagnant piece of land.

Our tour began out on Paris Pike, a wide country road that runs from Lexington to Paris, Kentucky, and which is lined on both sides with massive, after massive farm. First, we passed the 1,500 acre Gainesway Farm with its iconic red-roofed buildings. A farm which for so many years had been for me just a common name in the Daily Racing Form next to “Brd:”, but was now right there before my eyes, in the flesh. Foals, its stars of tomorrow, grazing in its fields. Each of these foals has a journey awaiting them, but to where? Further down Paris Pike, we then pulled down the driveway of the lesser known Walmac Farm, where a few stallions with whom Sandy breeds mares to on a regular basis stand. The prospects for one, Successful Appeal, Sandy is particularly excited about. Walmac has more of an old world charm about it than does some of the more grandiose structures lining the driveways of today’s more prominent farms, Winstar for example. Walmac’s buildings are a collection of smaller, more numerous outhouse-type barns, all wooden and painted white with forest green trim. Walmac, with its small, scattered buildings, is much different than many of the newer farms that are typically centered around one larger building, and have an off-putting corporate coolness about them. There is a classy sensibility that hangs in the air between the buildings at Walmac. A sensibility that gives the onlooker a sense that this farm, though smaller, will yet be around longer than some of its newer, bigger, and gaudier counterparts. David will continue to beat Goliath. The tortoise always outpace the hare.

Winstar has done a fabulous job and enjoyed great success over the last couple of years, but mainly because they have that one big stallion that every breeding operation dreams about, Distorted Humor, whose live foal fee is $300,000. Winstar’s behavior, though, as exemplified by the farm’s main building that sits behind a man-made pond to welcome visitors and potential clients alike, and which is newly constructed, speaks of a certain carelessness, of a belief that the luck that has befallen their operation is permanent rather than unpredictable. One gets a sense that Winstar’s rainy-day fund is not that large. Why is it that in this industry luck often mutates into hubris? For this reason, it is often not the lucky ones that survive. It is the Walmac’s. The old-guard operations that run their organizations with the same ethos through the good times and the bad.

Our tour marched on, from the Sheik’s Shadwell Farm to Three Chimneys, to the Woodford Equestrian Veterinarian facilities to the Kentucky Horse Park farm. It was almost an overwhelming amount of sights and information. As we drove by farm after farm, I began to think that the countryside of Lexington is a lot like wine country, each horse farm and their grandiose structures representative of an owner and his or her vision. Each horse farm, a transubstantiation of the ego, aspirations, beliefs, and dreams of its owner. One farm after another, all breeding horses they hope to be winners, all claiming that the way that they do it is unique, just like vineyard after vineyard that all grow grapes, but claim the terroir, or “sense of place,” of their land is somehow unique and better form all the rest, even different from those vineyards that fall within its same appellation. As unique as all the horse farms along Paris Pike, Ironworks Pike, and all the other smaller country roads in Central Kentucky may be, the simple fact remains that there are simply too many for them all to survive. And so, like a soothsayer, we must envision who the barns of tomorrow will be. If only Lady Luck were so easy to tame.

As we drove on, the afternoon sun now high in the sky, I began in my mind to try and wrestle with all the backstories I had just heard, and to wonder about which of these farms may still be here, or under the same ownership, the next time I see them. As painful as changing fortunes can be for the parties involved, I thought, without the transience there would be no backstories. After all, it is the backstories which give life to the farms, so I suppose without the transience, all the farms would fade into a boring state of stagnation.

Sandy and I got back to the track just in time for the 5th, and some afternoon racing. The paddock was full of people when we arrived (one of the luxuries of being with Sandy was we were able to traipse right through the back gate to the paddock). As we perched ourselves under one of the paddock’s dogwood trees, I began to look around at the other people inside the paddock.

The way that track-goers dress can tell you a lot about a track’s history and the people who frequent its meets. No meet exemplifies this theory better than Keeneland. At Keeneland, far less common are the elaborate bonnets and pastel spring dresses of Churchill Hill Downs, or the corporate coolness of the suits during a summer in Saratoga. Far from the California casualness of Santa Anita, or the movie-star glitz of Del Mar, the place where “the surf and turf meet,” more than any track Keeneland demonstrates North American horse racing’s indebtedness to the United Kingdom. As clear from the prospectus, the Keeneland meet was designed in many aspects after the meeting at Ascot in England, “It must be recognized also that the great course at Ascot, in England, is conducted solely for sport- and the Ascot meetings are the most brilliant in the world.”

And some 74 years later, in the dress of Keeneland’s patrons, that ambition to hold a meet in the same vein as Ascot’s brilliance is still apparent. The hat-wearing traditions of Royal Ascot are apparent at Lexington. Horsemen don British bowlers and tweed driving caps. Even an occasional “topper” can be encountered. Madras three-piece suits. Wooden canes. Binoculars. Tortoise-shell eye glasses. Ladies in light-colored frock jackets. Spring dresses and flowery hats. Keeneland’s Ascot-inspired dress is a testament to the the prospectus’s influence in present times. Keeneland, a meet whose patrons still carry on the the aspirations of its founders generations later.

Keeneland’s focus on tradition is reminiscent of another southern sporting tradition that was also borne out of the Great Depression, The Masters Golf Tournament, which began only a year earlier than when The Keeneland Association signed its articles of incorporation in 1935. Both are a reflection of the American south, as both are inextricably linked with the region’s belief in hospitality and a reverence for the past. The official colors of both events are green and yellow. Both were started by a wealthy set of primarily southern, male investors. Both in present time possess massive financial surpluses, and are models of effective management: strong brand recognition, sound expansion policies to keep up with the constant demands of the future, a clear mission statement, a reverence for their own history, and above all a dedication to the fan experience.

There is also a country-club feel to Keeneland like there is at the home of The Masters, Augusta National Golf Club. There is a similar neurotic, but essential attention to detail at both places. This welcomed neuroticism spans beyond the concept and the facilities to the staff. A wandering eye, a lost look, rarely go unnoticed for long on the grounds at Keeneland. Quickly, like a wayward ship blown back on course, an attentive staff member sets you back heading in the right direction. Whether its the friendly staff in the track kitchen, a betting-window employee, Phyllis in the library, a parking lot attendant, or any of Keeneland’s other 2,177 full and part-time employees, they seem to be filled with a sense that they are part of something special. All seem certain in their roles, and the mission of the entity they work for. All seem to relish where they are, and of what they are a part.

With the country-club feel at Keeneland, however, also comes a more disheartening aspect. Keeneland was created in a different era of the American south. In the early 1900’s, particularly in the deep American south, class divides were still drastic. The Keeneland Prospectus makes no bones about the fact that its founders wished to create a track and an experience that embodied the notion that horse racing was indeed the “sport of kings.” Whereas many other tracks around the country, Saratoga for example, have graduated from the sport’s caste-like past to world where the jet-set and working class alike all mingle on similar grounds, a class divide is still readily apparent at Keeneland.

In the south entrance of the track Grandstand is the Clubhouse section. As you enter the front door, you walk into a grand space, underneath tall ceilings with large, varnished wooden beams, a hanging chandelier. The walls covered in golden-framed paintings. On the left wall is a tall limestone fireplace. Along the right wall runs a lavishly, carpet-covered set of stairs. Just past the fireplace on the left runs a long hallway, which pours out into an impeccable green lawn. From the grandstand, outside the clubhouse section, further up the stretch, one can look down on this very same lawn, and see the way in which Keeneland’s architecture aggressively accentuates the class-divide. The lawn area is separated from the General Admission area by a strip of Polytrack on which the horses make their way from the paddock and onto the track.

On one side of this strip of Polytrack is the lawn, full of men in three-piece suits and driving hats. Elderly men with expensive, wooden canes and binocs strewn about their neck. Young women in black dresses, and designer sun-glasses. On the other side of the divide are t-shirts and shorts, baseball caps, and tall draft beers glistening under the Kentucky sun. Whereas at Saratoga the jet-set and weekend fan alike mingle more readily in a less delineated fashion, at Keeneland this is not so. The divide is a reminder that in the preservation of the sport’s past, it is somewhat difficult to preserve only parts of its past.

Sandy and I were able to pick a few winners, on what was for us due to the morning’s tour a shortened card; although, most of our winners came at short odds. While we did not get rich, we were certainly happy to be trackside, tickets in-hand, rooting on our horses. As we awaited the day’s last race, I realized I had worked up quite an appetite, so I had one of Keeneland’s iconic Reuben sandwiches, which I washed down with a cold, Kentucky Ale. As I ate my sandwich, I thought, there are probably no Kentucky Ale’s at Ascot. The beer, the corned beef, enjoyed together under a low, evening sun, tasted a lot like Kentucky.

Sources:

2008 Media Guide. Keeneland Association, Inc.

“A Proposal for the Establishment of A Model Racetrack at Keeneland.” 1935. Keeneland Association, Inc.

The Keeneland Legacy. Video.

Keeneland: Part 1 of 3

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:31:31 -0400

While I was waiting for my morning coffee at a Starbucks in downtown Lexington, a guy behind the counter asked me, “You going to Keeneland?” I suppose I looked like a track-goer, that morning in Lexington, clad in a tan, cotton summer suit, a pressed shirt, sunglasses sitting buried in hair on the top of my head, a Daily Racing Form pressed under my arm. But I considered myself more a racetrack pilgrim.

“Yes,” I answered.

“So am I,” he said. “I am getting out of work early, at noon. I have never been before.”

“Are you a student at UK?” I asked astonished.

“No. Born and raised in Lexington. I have just never been.” My trip to Keeneland was indeed a bit of a pilgrimage. I had flown down from New York for a few of the last days of the Keeneland spring meet. I had made the decision on a whim. One afternoon a pang of anxiety overwhelmed me as I contemplated that yet another Keeneland meet might come and go without me attending. I was about to miss another chance. I had to go, I thought. The same thing I suppose every pilgrim thinks before they tie their boots and take that first step into the vast, imposing desert; their mind’s eye contemplating what awaits. I had to see this mecca of horse racing.

I left the Starbucks, though, still astonished that this stranger I had just met had spent his entire lifetime a mere two miles from the racetrack, and never once had the happenings inside its walls intrigued him enough to check it out.

As you drive on to the grounds, and past the Keeneland gate which sits directly across Versailles Rd. from the Lexington Airport, to the right of the ground’s winding driveway on top of a large hill, presiding over the Keeneland grounds like a lighthouse over the sea, sits a 10,000 sq. ft, limestone structure. It is the Keeneland Library, home to more than 10,000 books, 225,000 photos and negatives, 100,000 trade and news publications, 1,500 videocassettes, and 3,000 files of news clippings pertaining to the sport of horse racing. The Keeneland Library, which dates back to 1939 and underwent a recent renovation in 2002, is a treasure trove of horse racing history. A passageway to the past, and a bridge of knowledge to the future.

In the Keeneland media guide, the library is referred to as the “soul of Keeneland.” I have long had an affection for libraries. You can tell a lot from a library. Whether it be the library at the University of Salamanca (Spain’s oldest university), or that at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, or even a neighbor’s more humble, living-room collection of worn paperbacks- all libraries are expressions of an institution’s or a person’s mind, likes, curiosities, ambitions.

I thought the library was a perfect place to start my pilgrimage to Keeneland, for in the words of Argentinean author Jose Louis Borges, it is “the Library [that] will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.” I thought, perhaps I will find something within this quiet labyrinth of bookshelves.

There is no better point to begin the exploration of a place, I thought, than at its very soul. And so my journey to Keeneland, to this place which had for so long ignited my curiosity but eluded my grasp, began with a few hours of quiet contemplation in the interior of its library.

I had arrived to Keeneland on a Tuesday morning, which was a “dark day” at the Keeneland meet, or a day in which there was no racing, so upon my arrival a quiet tranquility presided over the empty grounds. Walking into the library, I noticed northward in the distance the grandiose Calumet Farm. Calumet was a bastion of racing success in the ‘70s, but has since fallen on harder times. A certain Poe-like, gothic spookiness of former glory now lingers in the air over the farm’s grand buildings.

Standing in The Keeneland Library I felt like the narrator of Borge’s “The Library of Babel,” who proclaimed, “like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues...” In the world of horse racing, Keeneland is as close to a Borgean “total library,” or “catalogue of catalogues” as the sport has come.

The library is a beautiful structure, built out of the same limestone which forms the outer walls of the track’s Grandstand, as well as that of The Keeneland Entertainment Center. Inside the library, I huddled like a Benedictine monk over old annals of time, and picture books of horse racing’s past. Outside, dark clouds hung over green, rolling hills, and wind swept through lone trees exposed to the elements. I felt like I was caught in some country cottage out of a Thomas Hardy or Emily Bronte novel, happy to be inside and huddled by the hearth, free from the unruly rains and winds pelting the grange.

Keeneland’s history is not as old of that of say Saratoga, a meet which dates back to 1863. Its history, however, even in its younger age, is nonetheless illustrious. Keeneland was founded through articles of incorporation which date from 1935, but the vision for Keeneland began well before with the work of a man named John Oliver Keene. Keene had wanted to create a training track for the bounty of horses stabled at his family farm, Keeneland, and so began construction on a stone edifice and track in 1916. But The Great Depression derailed Keene’s efforts, and put the future of his training track in jeopardy.

A committee of horsemen, however, led by a man named Hal Price Headley, viewed the foundation work of Keene as an opportunity to create a new, alternative racing locale to the failed, old Lexington track. Headley and his committee wished to have Kentucky’s thoroughbred heritage, “made permanent through the agency of a model race track dedicated solely for the perpetuation and improvement of the sport and specifically committed never to seek profits...” In other words, Headley wished to create a track made by horsemen and women, primarily for the use of horsemen and women. The committee was formally organized under the name, “The Keeneland Association.”

The Keeneland Association purchased from Keene: 145 acres of his land, a one-and-one-sixteenth mile track, a stone building (which which was 258 ft. long by 58 ft. high), a water system (which included a 100,000 gallon water tank), an incomplete quarter mile training track, 48 fireproof stalls, an accumulation of plant and shrubbery, and a paved entrance-way to the property. And so, by 1935 much of the infrastructure which would come to form the Keeneland grounds had already been completed via the effort’s of Keene. What was needed in 1935 to begin a new meet in Lexington was not infrastructure, but rather a founding mission. A vision. This is what The Keeneland Association provided.

As the prospectus notes, Keeneland in the visions of its founders was but a “shadow of a dream,” but it was also a dream that its founders intended to mix with “hard mathematics, solid common sense, substantial facts, and the integrity of a community [to] give substance and form to the dream.”

In 1935, Keeneland was a dream, and was founded like so many of the finer things in this world upon the base of a lofty vision. This vision lent the meet’s founders and all who have dedicated their efforts to the meet’s survival ever since a clear, demanding sense of purpose. As I continued scouring through the annals, my eyes growing tired and dry, the weather outside the library’s windows still menacing and huffing, I thought, that in this current world of corporate malfeasance and mismanagement, of increasing bureaucratic inefficiency and graft in Washington it is reassuring to have an organization like Keeneland remind us that sound management practices, adherence to founding principles, and a clear sense of purpose really can and do create something great. Something which not only survives, but like an aging bottle of red wine, grows more complex and beautiful with age.

After a few hours inside, and as I was about to leave the library, I was met by Phyllis Rogers, one of Keeneland’s resident librarians. When I told Phyllis of my primary reasons for visiting Keeneland, she instantly flooded me with media guides, DVD’s, and pamphlets full of information. Phyllis is in many ways an embodiment of what makes Keeneland so special. She is not a tall woman, her hair hangs short, above her shoulders. She was dressed in a suit, and tasteful jewelry. She spoke in a deliberate, thoughtful, and soft manner. Listening to Phyllis, it was instantly clear that watching over the “soul of Keeneland” is a job whose importance has not been lost on her. She meets her task with not only a certain southern gentility and grace that makes the most foreign of visitors feel like they are home again, but also with a seriousness which lends the library, Keeneland’s soul, the gravity it demands.

I walked away from the library that evening with information swirling around my mind like a tempest. Familiar now with the seedlings of Keeneland’s history, I grew excited for the morning. I grew excited to see the flowering of Keeneland’s founding principles in the running of its present day meet. I had arrived at my destination; and yet, what I had come in search for I knew still eluded my grasp.

Sources:

2008 Media Guide. Keeneland Association, Inc.

“A Proposal for the Establishment of A Model Racetrack at Keeneland.” 1935. Keeneland Association, Inc.

Yankee and Shea Stadium and the Rebirth of Racing

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:45:52 -0400

There is something about going to the ballpark that touches the soul. Something about the sound of bats cracking in the summer heat. Something about the roar of the crowd building like an ocean swell as a line drive shot rises into the air and cascades into a green gap in the outfield. Something so comfortable about peeling peanuts, casting the shells at your feet, and washing down the salty goodness with a tall, cold draft beer. A bright sun leathering your skin.

I am reminded of the story Japanese writer Haruki Murakami tells of the moment he decided to become a writer:

Then at the age of 29, a sudden impulse of writing a novel knocked on me...It was an early afternoon in spring and I went to see a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and Hiroshima Carp in Jingu Baseball Stadium. Lying down in the outfield bleacher, drinking beer, when a player named Hilton hit a double, I made a sudden resolution that, "now it's time for me to start writing a novel." This is how I started to write a novel.

When I give such an explanation to my students, all of them make a stunned face. "That means ah...the ball game meant something very special to you?" I don't think so. The spring sunshine, the taste of beer, the flying two-base-hit ball, all these elements got together and they stimulated something in me, I guess...

There is something moving about this simple experience- sitting in the stands of a ballpark. Something universal to man. Something that spans east and west.

Although, going to the ballpark in New York, with the construction of the new Yankee and Shea Stadium, has now become an experience that the average fan cannot now afford.

The TMR Index (which measures the cost of 2 avg. price adult tickets, 2 child tickets, 2 beers, 4 hot dogs, 2 soft drinks, parking, 2 programs, and 2 adult caps) has for Yankee’s fans, with the construction of the team’s new stadium, increased to a league high of $410.88. Over $400 for a day at the park!

To think, if the prices were so inhibitive at the Jingu Baseball Stadium in Japan as they are in New York at the new Yankee Stadium, Murakami may never have gone to that ball game, never have gotten the impulse to write, and the world would not have been graced with one of the 20th and 21st century’s finest writers.

New York’s baseball teams have made the decision through the construction of their new stadiums to cater to corporate America versus the average fan. The new Yankee Stadium has more than 130 luxury suites, whereas the old stadium had only 40. In the new stadium, reserved seats in the main level cost 5 times what they did in 1970, after adjusting 1970 ticket prices for inflation. The average price for premium seats at the new Yankees Stadium are $510.08. The Cubs have the second highest premium seat cost, all the way back at $239.43. The 2009 average price for a Yankee’s ticket is $72.91, a 76.3% increase from the average ticket price in 2008.

With this 76.3% price hike, Yankee’s management taunts to the strapped consumer, given nearly every asset class in the world is off 40-50% over the same period. Taxes in New York are higher. Job cuts increase by the day. Mass transit costs are rising. The consumer in New York is being hit from every direction; and yet, despite all this the Yankees think the very same consumer will be fine paying nearly double what it did last year to go to a ball game this year?

Clearly, the Yankees and Mets planned their stadiums in a different era. A time in New York when people paid $23 for bacon-infused martini’s, or $48 for wasabi-dusted scallops. Well, because they could. But the financial planning of New York’s baseball teams that began years ago was a most egregious extrapolation. Now, Yankees and Mets management are stuck. Stuck with stadiums built for another era.

For the average fan, the cost of a ball game at Yankee and Shea Stadium has become prohibitive.

So what is the average sports fan to do? Hopefully, go the the racetrack instead!

On-track attendance at all major racetracks around the country has been on a steady decline for decades. As this piece from npr.org points out, the racing industry even stopped publishing nationwide attendance figures fifteen years ago. That is because the figures are horrendous. “There are not many rail birds left,” the piece continues.

“There are two many alternatives,” has been the common explanation. Too many affordable, enticing, entertaining live events for the sports fan to attend; and, amidst this broad menu of options the racetrack has simply gotten lost in the shuffle. Enticing alternatives, coupled with the fact that the internet allows those only interested in gambling to do so from their living room (and also at a cheaper cost - because Advanced Deposit Wagering sites offer bettors rebates on the commission or vig tracks take) has been the downfall of a day at the track, so the argument goes.

Life, though, is full of cycles. The rail birds are indeed largely now gone, but there is no reason that with sunnier climates they will not return in droves. Bring the rail birds back. The broader economy booms and busts. Winter turns to spring. The Saratoga yearling auction comes again. Live sporting events fall out of favor. New sports emerge. The management of leagues like the MLB, NFL, and other alternatives to horse racing make mistakes.

The horse racing fan in me hopes that the Yankee’s gaffs will be horse racing’s gains, and that on-track attendance will experience a much-needed boost. The simple theory being that prohibitive costs at familiar haunts like Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden have left out the cash-strapped New York sports fan; and yet, this same fan will still yearn for the rush of live sporting events. This same fan will hopefully turn to one of the only affordable sports venues left in New York- the racetrack.

At $2 for a General Admission ticket, the racetrack offers some of the cheapest live sports entertainment in the world. What other sport can you watch live-and-in-the-flesh a sport’s major athletes for only a $2 price of admission?

If only this means a return to the glory days of New York horse racing, when it was not uncommon for weekend crowds at the old Jamaica track to top 20,000 fans. I yearn for the days when the track was a place to see and be seen. A place where men wore suits, their hair combed and hopes high. When women came donned in minted dresses, and fancy lipstick. A time when the stretch rail was covered in elbows. A vast billow of cigarette smoke lingering above the grandstand. And thousands upon thousands of eyes zeroed in on the starting gate for the first point of call.

I hope the track will win a few baseball fans. Perhaps a person or two, priced out of Yankee or Shea Stadium, who decides instead to spend a day in the stands at Belmont, where they will become so transfixed by the sights and sounds around them, like Murakami that spring afternoon at Jingu Baseball Stadium, that they will vow to become a writer.

Sources:

Nypl.org Digital Gallery. ID: 414984. “15,000 watch running of Paumonok Handicap at Jamaica track, Tryster of the Whitney stables come in first.”

Further Reading:

Yankees for Sale: The Talk of the Town. (The New Yorker, 4/27/09)
Yankees Seek to Fill Stadium with Price Cuts, Giveaways. (Bloomberg, 4/29/09)

Ye Old Empire State Part II: The Sanford Family

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 14:12:40 -0400

Ye Olde Empire State is a multi-part series that will attempt to tell the history of horse racing in New York. To understand the “new dawn of racing,” one view of which this site chronicles in its feature entitled Derby Dreams, it is important to put the new developments of the sport in the context of its past. Please do not hesitate to submit comments regarding which aspects of New York racing’s past you would like to hear more about. The pieces in Ye Old Empire State tend to be longer, so require a bit more time than some of this site’s other features.

In August of 1939, the career of one of New York’s most accomplished owners and breeders came to an abrupt end. John Kieran of the New York Times wrote, “John Sanford for the first time in ever so many years, didn’t come to Saratoga this season. But his horses did. All but one [of Sanford’s string of horses] went under the hammer.”

Only about a month later on September 27, 1939, John Sanford died at the age of 86. Sanford was a native of Amsterdam, NY, but he perished in the neighboring town of Saratoga Springs, where he had gone to attend the Saratoga Racing Association’s diamond jubilee. The owner and breeder bereft of his greatest passion had lost the will to live.

In a Bloodhorse obituary for Sanford shortly after his death, the author credited Sanford, with being “a Turfman who remained a sportsman long after the encouragement of success was denied him...”

A fire earlier that year, one of the more tragic barn fires ever to befall the sport of horse racing, had presumably triggered Sanford’s decision to liquidate his stable. On January 9th, 1939, a fiery blaze tore through Sanford’s farm, Sanford Stud. Engulfed in the flames were twenty-five of the breed’s finest thoroughbreds. Horses killed in the fire included renowned steeplechaser Supply House and the stakes-winning Sun Port. The papers the following morning attributed the fire to “defective wiring.” Small-town suspicion still lingers in Amsterdam, New York that the fire was the product of a disgruntled employee. But the cause of the fire mattered little to Sanford. Its outcome left him devastated.

The fire too marked the beginning of the end for the Sanford’s prominence in the national horse racing seen. All that remains now of the Sanford’s once legendary horse racing prominence is a eroding stud farm and a largely forgotten legacy. A legacy for which the time has come to remember and restore it to its rightful place in the annals of New York history.

One must go back to General Stephen Sanford though, John Sanford’s father, and his founding of Sanford Stud under the name Hurricana Stud Farm in 1880, to understand where the Sanford horse legacy began. It was John who incorporated and renamed the farm to the family’s namesake 53 years after his father founded the farm.

Stephen Sanford, a West Point graduate, had used his leadership skills to amass great wealth as a successful carpet and textile manufacturer, inheriting from his father a shrewd business sense, but also possessing an intensity unique to himself. Stephen’s business efforts would grow to be so successful that he was reputed to have left his son an inheritance of $40 million upon his death in 1913, a stately sum in the early 1900’s.

Stephen’s business success was also largely a function of the changing fortunes of Amsterdam, New York. Amsterdam in the mid 1800’s had become an important hub of commerce, bringing to the city’s most savvy entrepreneurs a formidable amount of wealth. The Erie Canal and the Mohawk River, which pass through the southern part of Amsterdam, were largely responsible for the city’s early economic growth. In 1825, the canal’s construction in particular helped to facilitate Amsterdam’s rise as a manufacturer of textiles, carpets, and pearl buttons, as it allowed the city to distribute its goods to points west.

The biggest carpet makers, Bigelow-Sanford and Mohawk Mills, have long since left Amsterdam. And with their departure, the city’s economic standing has softly faded into the past.

According to some accounts, Stephen started Hurricana after his doctor told him that he needed a healthy hobby. It was the wealth he earned as a textile manufacturer that allowed him to enter into his new endeavor head-on. But the first stirring for horses in the Sanford blood can be traced further back into the family’s history than the founding of Hurricana, all the way back to May 10, 1842.

Stephen at the time was a young boy of 16 and a student at Georgetown, right across the nation’s capital from his father, who was at the time a second-session Congressman up on Capitol Hill. John Sanford, Stephen’s father was a hard-working, self-made man, who had moved to Amsterdam, NY from Roxbury, CT. John had his hands in many endeavors before and after he became a US Congressman, everything from haymaker to textile manufacturer. It was the entrepreneurial stirrings of John that laid much of the groundwork for the success of his son.

In the May of ’42, the two of them left D.C., spring bursting into full bloom on the banks of the Potomac, to head all the way back up the eastern seaboard to Long Island. Father and son were headed to the Union Racecourse on Long Island to see the much anticipated match race between Fashion and Boston. Two fellow inmates, on a jail-break from responsibility, humming tunes in the open air and killing time as their journey north marched on. It was a story that Stephen’s sons Will and John would evoke decades later, cementing its importance in the family’s oral history.

When I read about this trip, I thought about all the similar ones I have taken with my own father through the years, and I can’t help but to feel that this is undoubtedly where Stephen’s passion for horses, which would pass even more strongly to the next generation of Sanfords, began.

My father and I have always joked that most sons and dads go fishing, or golfing, or skiing in search of father-son bonding. We go to the track.

The 16 year-old Stephen must have felt like a king that afternoon, together with his father, his hero, a US Congressman and famously amicable man, as they trudged up the east coast, locked in the present moment, all of spring’s scents hitting their heightened senses, their minds anticipating a great equestrian duel, and the bets and thrills surely to follow suit.

Hurricana Stud Farm, the vision of Stephen and the product of a multi-generational Sanford passion for horses, was really a collection of farms which Stephen had purchased across a number of years- Birch Farm, Phillips Farm, Sullivan Farm, Sherwood Farm, Chalmers Place, Allen House, and Alexander McFarland’s Farm. Stephen Sanford didn’t know how to do moderation. Thankfully for the thoroughbred breed, his horse endeavors were no different.

According to Stephen’s grandson Laddie, Hurricana’s stud really began with his grandfather’s purchase of the horse Potomac. What seems to be laid down less clearly in the annals of time, is which horse was the very first to grace the Hurricana stables. One account credits Stephen’s sons, John and Will, with responsibility for Hurricana’s first horse.

In the same way that racing qualities pass through generations of thoroughbreds, human qualities such as a passion for horses also pass through the generations in nonlinear and often unexplainable ways. A passion for horse racing in the Sanford family seems to have reached a pitch in the hearts and minds of Stephen’s two boys John and Will. And posterity credits their mischievous, undying passion with Hurricana’s first acquisition.

The two boys, full of the dream to win at Saratoga, had purchased a horse named Partnership and hidden him in a livery stable in Amsterdam very close to Hurricana. Two brothers scheming in the middle of summer. Two fellow bandits. Best friends.
Stephen eventually found out about John and Will’s horse named Partnership, but rather than being mad, the boy’s father was far from it. And in this way, the long succession of thoroughbred greats that would come to grace the rolling hills of Hurricana began.

A similar story concerns the famous steeplechaser Post Guard. John and Will had seen the horse at Sheepshead Bay, at the time named General Phillips, and instantly decided to purchase the newest apple of their eye. Stephen, like he was with Partnership, was not mad. In this way, Stephen’s passion for horses reinforced that of his boys, and vice versa.

Stephen, like his son John would become, in addition to being a lover of horses, was also known as a famous gambler. And a story of Stephen relates how he would eventually come to watch the horse, Post Guard, which his boys had covertly purchased, “sitting in the stands and betting large sums of money at every fence, betting Post Guard would clear the jump.”

In 1903, horse racing would suffer a great blow in the form of some anti-gambling provisions, which began a series of measures that together would greatly reduce the number of racetracks in the United States, and which would also serve to derail much of the success that Stephen and Hurricana Stud had enjoyed.

In 1897, there were 314 racetracks in the US, but by 1910 there were only 25. The Progressive movement had clawed its teeth into the sport of horse racing, and it appeared it would never be the same again. In 1910, further legislation initiated a blackout on New York racing, which would last until 1913. The blackout of horse racing in New York from 1910-1913 is what I refer to “The Dark Years” in New York thoroughbred horse racing.

Stephen Sanford, the man whose famous trainer Hollie Hughes described as having a “majestic personality, one to whom your eyes would turn instinctively,” however, did not live to see the ban on the sport he so loved lifted. On February 13, 1913, Stephen Sanford forever left the right side of the turf, and was buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Amsterdam, NY at the age of 87.

Stephen’s passion for horses, though, would live on through subsequent generations of Sanfords, particularly through his son John, and his grandson Laddie.

It was under John’s stewardship and not under that of its founder that Sanford Stud experienced its greatest success- the pinnacle of which was the 1916 Kentucky Derby, when Sanford’s horse George Smith emerged triumphant. Sanford had purchased George Smith the previous year for $22,500. The following May, Smith left the starting gate at Churchill Downs at odds of 415-100 (odds were conventionally quoted at the time using a “money line” format), and stormed to victory, underneath a sky that was filled with “just enough haze in the air to counteract the scorching rays,” according to The New York Times.

Nowhere, however, did John feel more at home than perched comfortably in the grandstand of his beloved Saratoga. It was across a succession of Saratoga summer meets that John earned a reputation for producing fast and promising 2 year-olds. John also earned a reputation at The Spa as an inveterate gambler.

“John Sanford...bet [the horses] big during most of that time....Frequently, he bet as much as $40,000 on the result of a steeplechase.” John Sanford was particularly fond of racing 2 year-olds, for his 2 year-old horses, being juveniles, were less known to the broader betting public. Sanford attempted to use his inside information as an owner to bet big on his 2 year-olds at long odds. But the bookies caught on to Sanford’s attempted traps, and would often move the odds on his 2 year-olds as soon as the man from Amsterdam would walk into their pits. “On the day when [Sanford] was ready to bet vast sums, he would find odds of 6 or 8 or 5 [to 1] staring at him [down from 30 to 1].” It was often the “sharpshooting, well-informed grooms” who would leak valuable information to the bookies with regards to who were Sanford’s most promising 2 year-olds.

The Sanford Stakes, a Grade I Stakes race run still to this day at the Saratoga meet, began running in 1913 after Stephen’s death to honor the family that had made such a difference to the sport. So much of the history of New York horse racing can be learned simply through understanding for whom todays stakes races are named- Sanford, Excelsior, Jim Dandy, Wood, Alabama, Gotham, Hopeful, etc.

The Sanford Stakes is perhaps best known, however, not for its namesake, but rather for its 1919 running when the appropriately named Upset defeated the great Man O’ War. This race is one of the many that has helped Saratoga through the decades earn the nickname “The Graveyard of Champions.”

It is also appropriate that The Sanford Stakes is a race for the country’s finest two-year olds, for it was two-year olds that John loved breeding, watching race, and betting on above all else.

As the decades rolled by, Sanford’s efforts continued to bring him stakes victories as well as immeasurably help to improve the thoroughbred breed for future generations. Sanford had 8 horses that influenced his horse operations above all else- Mohawk II, Caughnawaga, Rockton, Chuchtanunda, La Tosca, Potomac, Molly Byrant, and Clifford. These horses were so special to Sanford and his breeding operation that Sanford honored these 8 horses by having made bronze, life-size statues in their honor. All of these statues remain hidden, though, from the public eye due to the tribulations that The Friends of Sanford Stud have chronicled on their website. Their fight for these monuments to be returned to the public’s eye is a noble one. A fight for preservation against greed. A fight I hope the good guys will win.

The story of the Sanfords highlights a funny aspect of the sport of horse racing, and that is we often do not fully know who the sport’s most influential patrons are until far after they depart this earth. We do not know until future generations of horses fully cement their ancestors lasting legacy on the thoroughbred breed. This future test is one the Sanfords of Amsterdam, and above all else John Sanford, have passed with flying colors.

The Sanfords influence on the breed can be traced in horses such as Bull Lea, War Relic, Citation, the dam Noodle Soup, who was mother of ’56 Kentucky Derby winner Needles, Secretariat, Affirmed, Cigar, Silver Charm, and Fusiachi Pegasus. So many of the horses that crowned the great decade of horse racing, the ’70’s, and beyond were an offshoot of the Sanford stock. Without the breeding practices of John Sanford in particular, it is tough to imagine where the breed would be today.

Times’ winged chariot, however, eventually caught up with John, as it does with us all. In 1939 well into his 80‘s, Sanford, faced with a fire-ravaged farm and the fatigue of old age, felt he was left with few options but to liquidate his stock and exit the game he loved.

A late picture of John Sanford shows the owner standing tall in a smart, three-piece suit, binocs hanging over his neck, eye-glasses on with a string running from the pair’s right lens to somewhere on his suit, a light-colored hat atop his head, his right hand supported by a hand-carved wooden cane, his left hand propped on his belt buckle. His eyes fixed on the horizon. A gaze that evokes Keats, “Or like stout Cortez when with his eagle eyes/He star’d at the Pacific- and all his men/ Look’d at each other with a wild surmise-/ Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” The model horseman standing watch over his flock.

The conduit for the survival of Sanford Stud would be John’s only son, Laddie.

Laddie was not stranger to owning horses, for in 1923 Laddie became the first American owner to ever win one of the UK’s most revered horse racing events- The Grand National. It was John, however, that had purchased the horse with which his son Laddie would win the trying hurdle race. Laddie at the time was a student at Cambridge, and John had purchased Sergeant Murphy for Laddie, who had originally intended to use Sergeant as a hunter.

Laddie was a renowned Polo player, who differed from his ancestors in that he played in a more stereotypical way the part of privilege- now a third generation of wealth, quite far removed from his great grandfather, who had moved from Roxbury, CT to Upstate NY with his entire possessions on his back.

Laddie operated in circles of privilege, having gone to Yale and Cambridge, and filling his free time with the hobbies of the rich, bouncing back and forth from the Hamptons and Palm Beach, and other exclusive environs. Beyond horse racing and golf, Laddie was a renowned Polo player and fox hunter. He was known for among other things his ability on a horse, and his years of carousing at Yale with his roommate and buddy, Sonny Whitney. Pictures in The Sanfords of Amsterdam capture Laddie next to foreign dignitaries and Hollywood actors.

Laddie, in old photos, casts a striking image. Black, slicked-back hair. A broad chin, and movie-star smile. He was bigger, and more barrel-chested than his forbearers. He had a stately look. His eyes always ready for the camera.

Decades of enduring the hard knocks of riding horses, and the subsequent Cortisone shots used to alleviate those hard knocks, caught up with Laddie in the end. In his latter years, the great Titan was bound to a wheelchair. A later picture shows the elderly Laddie, his hair still a shinny black, parted and and slicked back, his skin a bit more worn with the wrinkles of time, handing from his wheelchair the Sanford Stakes trophy to the winning owner.

In his latter years, Sanford would also get to the winner’s circle many times on his own accord with great horses like Rafty, Upsy Daisy, Fulton, Blenreigh, Polly Watts, Mackville, Delphic Oracle, and many others.

In 1977, Laddie Sanford at age 78 died without a son to carry-on the Sanford tradition of horse breeding and owning. It was upon Laddie’s death, ironically the last year the sport of horse racing played witness to a Triple Crown winner, that the saddest chapter of the Sanford history began. It is a chapter that is still unfolding, but whose conclusion looks as if it will be bleak, particularly if proper time is not taken to remember and understand the importance that the Sanford family had in the world of horse racing. The death of their legacy would hurt everyone. The fight for remembrance and preservation one that should be waged by all who loves the sport as much as they did.

According to The Sanfords of Amsterdam, “Blueberries and cream, that was John Sanford’s dish at Saratoga. He used to sit at a table on the clubhouse balcony. Near his left hand was a pair of field glasses as big as a howitzer. In front of him a bowl of blueberries and cream into which he dipped with evident satisfaction.”

While three generations of Sanfords touched the world of thoroughbred horse racing, arguably neither Stephen or Laddie would have quite the influence of John. For John Sanford was the bridge. It was John who, along with his brother Will, had secretly bought a racer named Partnership with the dream of winning at Saratoga, the first horse to live at their father Stephen’s farm, Hurricana Stud. It was John who had raced and won with George Smith in the Kentucky Derby. It was John who had purchased eventual winner of the Grand National, Sergeant Murphy, for his son Laddie. It was John who oversaw the transformation of Hurricana Stud into Sanford Stud.

John Sanford, along with all the Sanfords, was a devout horseman his entire life, one who helped thrust New York into the national breeding scene, creating a pinnacle to which the state has never returned. The balance power has since shifted to the blue-green fields of Kentucky, and as an owner in New York it feels as if that very shift has sadly become a permanent one, partly because New Yorkers have failed to embrace and celebrate their past. As varied as New York’s broader history is, it is easy to allow certain aspects of the state’s past to get buried in the dust of time. But New York’s horse racing history is arguably as rich as any state in the union. For this reason, New York racing’s legacy needs to be preserved.

It is hard to feel alone at Saratoga. For in Saratoga, ghosts linger.

It is hard to sit in the clubhouse grandstand and not imagine John Sanford sitting there, his day’s blueberries and cream sitting beside a spread out race program on his table, his face buried in his howitzer-sized binocs as he sits on the edge of his seat and peers out over the infield pond and its painted canoe, aimed for the backstretch, to zero-in on one of his two year-olds, bet laid and hopes high. The Saratoga sun shining.

To donate money to help preserve what remains of Sanford Stud, click here.

Sources:

The Sanfords of Amsterdam: the biography of a Family in Americana, by Alex Robb. The William Frederick Press, 1969.

“John Sanford Dies in Saratoga at 88,” New York Times. September 27, 1939. Obituary.

“Stable Fire Kills Sanford Racers,” New York Times. January 10, 1939.

“Closing Stable Doors,” John Kieran. New York Times. August 28, 1939.

“George Smith is Victor in Derby,” New York Times. May 14, 1916.

“Sanford Stud,” Barbara Livingston. Adapted from and article published in the New York Thoroughbred printed by the New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Saratoga Springs, NY. 2001.

Such Was Saratoga, by Hugh Bradley. Ayer Publishing, 1975.

Horseracing in the Progressive Era, Bennett Liebman. Mary Ann Liebert Inc., 2008.

Camden and The Carolina Cup

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:34:21 -0400

The drive into Camden, South Carolina from points north is a circuitous one. Hwy. 97, which my girlfriend and I took down from Charlotte, looks more like an oversized country road- winding past empty fields and white, worn-down sheds- than a highway. Neither I-95 to the east nor I-85 to the west travel through Camden, so the traveller driving through the heart of South Carolina is left with few options but to traverse more indirect routes.

There are few buildings lining Hwy. 97, the occasional church or post office sprout in an otherwise sparse landscape. Here and there a bar appears, light emanating out of lone windows into the quiet, night-covered countryside like out of a Hopper painting- the Stockyard Grill, Flamingo’s, and Double D’s Bar greet the traveler in otherwise empty backcountry.

A few motorcycles and the occasional truck line the bars’ driveways. I imagine a few patrons seated inside at the bar, blue, florescent light sprinkling over their backs and on to the bar counter, as they stare forlornly into the row of glistening bottles in front of them. Music playing in the silence at their backs.

The country roads, however, soon give way to the town of Camden, which offers some quiet vestiges of privilege in what is an otherwise poor state. Tall cypress trees line a series of wide avenues and hide old, southern homes with wrapping, wisteria-covered porches, white columns, long green lawns stretching back from the passerby’s street view.

Camden’s history has also long been intertwined with the National Steeplechase scene, where in 1930 what is now known as “The Cup” was run for the first time. Coupled with Aiken, Camden has helped put South Carolina on the horseman and horsewoman’s annual calendar for over 75 years. Camden has few of the boarding and training operations of Aiken, but it arguably lays claim to the more prominent steeplechase racing.

The Cup is run over the Springdale Racecourse, touted in the program as “the first full-length steeplechase course in this country where all the jumps could be viewed from the same spot.” It was not South Carolinians, but rather two wealthy residents of Upstate New York, Ernest L. Woodward and Harry D. Kirkover, who were responsible for purchasing the land that would become the Springdale course. “Instantly enamored with the legendary southern hospitality and special charm that is the essence of Camden,” the program explains, “Kirkover and Woodward bought the land on which the Springdale Race Course was built.” The two men’s role in the first running of The Cup in 1930 earned them the mark of being “perhaps the most important winter residents to come to Camden.” And so the magical interplay between Camden and those from elsewhere, between southern hosts/hostesses and foreign guests began.

As the program makes clear, and what any visitor to Camden soon realizes, is that residents of Camden do pride themselves on their “southern hospitality.” My girlfriend and I came down for the races on the heel of an invite from my college roommate and his family, who live in a quiet neighborhood in the heart of Camden. Watching my old friend and his family over the course of the weekend, playing host to a platoon of house guests, made it clear that the notion of “southern hospitality” in Camden is not a myth or some kitschy piece of travel marketing, but rather an undeniable reality. A character trait with which residents of Camden both pride and identify themselves.

To watch my friend and his family across the weekend was like listening to a Debussy concerto unfold in the air. Empty cups remained so only for a second. Guests’ offers to help were politely and sternly refused. Beds were offered up and turned down. Plentiful breakfast spreads were laid out each morning to greet early and late risers alike.

To watch a group of hosts, such as ours in Camden, is to watch a genius in the midst of creation. Hospitality is not easy, and residents of Camden have found a way to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate one of the most common place and yet at the same time elusive of social practices known-to-man.

The Carolina Cup and the Springdale Racecourse changed hands of ownership in the 1960’s, when the “Grand Lady of Steeplechasing” Marion Dupont Scott purchased Springdale. In the ‘70s, Dupont Scott created a sister event to The Carolina Cup (The Colonial Cup), for which she introduced a $100,000 purse (which was the richest at the time). Dupont Scott won her very own race only two years later with her famous jumper, Soothsayer.

Dupont though, made her most prominent splash in the world of steeplechasing long before she founded The Colonial Cup. In 1938, Dupont won the U.K.’s Grand National with her horse, Battleship. Dupont’s victory came only fifteen years after the first American to achieve this feet, Laddie Sanford, won the 1923 Grand National with a horse named Sergeant Murphy.

The inside cover of The Cup’s most recent program hails Dupont, one of its most important matrons, “her vision and determination to compete successfully by doing what was best for the horse and best for the sport made her the very heart and soul of American steeplechase racing.” Above this description sits a reproduction of a portrait of Dupont and her dog. She stands tall, her short, petite frame clad in a grey wool suit, white blouse, and a circular black hat. Her eyes staring into the distance, at a horse being led into a stable in the painting’s background.

The weather forecast for race day was gloomy - 100% chance of rain. The forecast turned to reality, as a hard rain fell throughout the day, driving most patrons under tailgate tents, and drenching those less inhibited fans, who soaked in a beer bravado, chose to live the day in the elements.

From the vantage point of our plot in the infield, the slope of the course was instantly apparent. The current grandstand, which was constructed in the 1980s, sits atop a large slope and it is from here, every jump on the course can be seen. From the infield the horses as they round past the grandstand, looked like jelly bean apparitions suspended in the fog. Behind the grandstand, a row of tall pines served as a backdrop to the press box and swayed in the hazy, persistent rain.

Behind our infield plot on the other side of the backstretch sat College Park. College Park was founded in the 1990’s, and has been a double-edged sword for the meet’s proprietors ever since. Each year college students from throughout the southeast and the Gulf descend upon a small, squared, caged-in plot of land in the middle of a field in South Carolina to spend eight hours drinking, furiously. Rain or shine.

With this torrent of young energy comes a civic nightmare for the local residents; DUI’s, drunk-in-publics, fist fights, alcohol poisonings, indecent exposures. And yet, concomitant with this horde of revelers is a much needed boon of revenue. Tickets at $40 a pop sold to this new band of race-goers, has been a financial necessity for The Cup since the mid-90’s.

It is a battle that many steeplechase events are struggling with from Charlottesville to Nashville - how to balance the revenue gains with the civic headaches. It makes sense that steeplechase races fell susceptible to the onrush of college tailgaters. Tailgating has long been a southern tradition, though mainly isolated to college football games. Although the warm temperatures and fresh countryside air of steeplechase races seem to have created an enticing locale for the college tailgater. The spring steeplechase has an even stronger pull as the sunshine entices ladies to don sun dresses, which in turn draws male pursuers. And round and round they go in the circle game.

The U.K., as much as that culture loves to imbibe, has not suffered from similar issues. For one, in the U.K. people young and old care much more about the sport itself. I would argue not one person in College Park could tell you who is Good Night Shirt. Also, the weather in the U.K. countryside is far less of a draw. So the events on the other side of the Atlantic sustain themselves on the fervor of horse fans alone. But it is easy to forget about the goings-on in College Park, cordoned off as they are. That I suppose will have to suffice as a solution for now - isolate and contain.

Six races filled the day’s card. The “Grade II First Carolina Cup” was the day’s fifth race and main event. I was eagerly anticipating the rematch between Good Night Shirt and Preemptive Strike. Good Night Shirt is the Eclipse winning ‘chaser from both ’07-’08. His owner Sonny Via hails from the great state of Virginia. Jockey Willie Dowling, when describing the great Good Night Shirt said, “it looks like he's got a big diesel engine pushing him.” It is with this truck-like running style that Good Night Shirt has become for his owner Via the second highest earner in steeplechasing history with career earnings of $979,493, second only to McDynamo.

The Cup was to be Good Night Shirt’s ’09 debut, coming off a star-studded ’08 campaign in which he got to the winner’s circle in all five of his starts (all Grade I events). Good Night Shirt’s most formidable foe in his ’08 run was Preemptive Strike, who went wire-to-wire versus Good Night Shirt in Camden’s 2008 Colonial Cup, Springdale’s other annual event founded by Mrs. Dupont Scott in the 1970’s.

The ’08 duel was a magical race. Good Night Shirt gained an impressive four lengths on the leading Preemptive Strike across the last two jumps, as jockey Willie Dowling made an impressive charge down towards the rail to nudge home a nose clear.

This year’s duel was almost a replay of last year’s Colonial Cup, except that it took place over a muddy, rain-soaked course. Preemptive Strike tried to beat Good Night Shirt getting out to the front early, going wire-to-wire, but the back-to-back Eclipse award winner was not to be denied. Good Night Shirt marched home a full length clear.

After the races, the party under our tailgate tent migrated to a friend’s house tucked away in a quiet neighborhood of Camden. Upon our arrival, my friend’s mother insisted we disrobe and throw our wet socks and coats into the dryer and instantly offered us servings of warm chili - a needed bowl of sustenance after a day of drinking, fresh air, and standing in the cold rain. In the top of the chili bowl she handed me, rested a thin slice of lemon. I had never seen that before. She explained that this culinary insight was the product of a family recipe - a trick a relative had picked up after spending some time in Mexico. “It makes it better,” she insisted.

I ate the chili and indeed the lemon made it better. The acidity lent a perfect balance to the spicy, sweet bowl of chili. I have had thousands of bowls of chili, never once with a slice of lemon. As I engulfed the last few bites, I couldn’t help but to notice a metaphor in that bowl.

Camden is a southern town that looks like most southern towns, which puts on a steeplechase event that looks like most steeplechase events. My friend’s mother cooked a bowl of chili that looked like, well, most bowls of chili; and yet, Camden, The Cup, the bowl of chili are all in their own way unique - better.
Camden is a special place that adds new riffs to old things all-the-while coupling this regenerative process with a warm, genial hospitality.

Camden’s hospitality reassures one that the notion of “southern charm” is indeed not a myth, but a tangible reality to be enjoyed as one enjoys a familiar hurdle race or a warm bowl of chili. Familiar things delivered in such a way that they take on the look and feel of something entirely new.

NSA 2009 SPRING SCHEDULE
Date           Meet                          Location
March 21    Aiken Spring               Aiken, S.C.
March 28    Carolina Cup              Camden, S.C.
April 4         Palm Beach                Wellington, Fla.
April 4         Stoneybrook               Raeford, N.C.
April 11       My Lady’s Manor        Monkton, Md.
April 11       Strawberry Hill            New Kent, Va.
April 18       Block House               Tryon, N.C.
April 18       Grand National           Butler, Md.
April 18       Middleburg                 Middleburg, Va.
April 25       Atlanta                       Kingston, Ga.
April 25       Foxfield Spring           Charlottesville, Va.
April 25       Maryland Hunt Cup    Glyndon, Md.
April 25       Queen’s Cup              Mineral Springs, N.C.
May 2         Virginia Gold Cup       The Plains, Va.
May 3         Winterthur                   Winterthur, Del.
May 9         Iroquois                       Nashville, Tenn.
May 10       Willowdale                   Kennett Square, Pa.
May 16       Radnor                         Malvern, Pa.
May 17       High Hope                    Lexington, Ky.
May 23       Fair Hill                         Fair Hill, Md.

The best steeplechase coverage out there

Ye Old Empire State Part I: New York’s Gotham Stakes

Sun, 8 Mar 2009 11:12:03 -0400

Peru and the Hipodromo de Monterrico

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:41:19 -0500

The day started with a lunch in Chorrillos, a fishing suburb on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. My father, brother, my dad’s brother and brother-in-law, and I were down in Peru for a tradition we like to call, “The Gentlemen’s Retreat.” The concept is simple- in January or February we go to a world city to which we have all never been, and have one hell of a time. One quality I always look for in a city when making my own nominations for the retreat is naturally whether or not the city has a racetrack. Lima, check. About twenty miles inland from the Pacific is the Hipodromo de Monterrico.

We had gone to Chorrillos in search of a restaurant named Sonia. I had seen it on Anthony Bourdain’s program “No Reservations,” which I watch with the devotion of Benedictine monk. Sonia is a neighborhood hole-in-wall (our cabby – who was from Chorrillos had trouble finding it). But it was here that we had a booze-soaked feast, accompanied by live criollo music. Full and content, our taxi drivers we had hired for the day, whom we got to calling “Alfresco” and “Eddie Murphy,” under “Alfresco’s” volition, picked us up, and breezed us to the Hipodromo for the second half of Sunday’s card.

The Hipodromo has a dilapidated charm, like a worn-down, green shedrow under evening light. The Hipodromo was not my first racetrack experience in the southern hemisphere. In August of 2005, my father and I enjoyed a cold, rainy day of racing holed up in the restaurant at the San Asidro Racetrack, which lies just outside of Buenos Aires. We had a few winners that day, and talked about how great it would be to own an apartment in Buenos Aires.

Alfresco negotiated us into the club section. I speak Spanish, but I could not keep up with Alfresco. While I couldn’t keep up with Alfresco, I knew he would get the job done. Some things transcend language, and character is one of them. Alfresco is a gregarious man, ebullient and full of laughs. A healthy example in this current world of doom and gloom. After the brisk negotiations, we made it to our seats, trackside and directly in front of the winner’s circle. They were excellent seats. Prime spot to watch another thing that transcends language- the joy of a winner. Race after race, I would watch owners proudly march into the winner’s circle to meet their heralded warriors. Kissing, laughing, smiling, standing proudly for the camera. It was a joyous orchestra of human emotion, and we had the best seats in the house to watch it all unfold.

When it comes to the quality of horse, the Hipodromo is certainly a step-down from San Asidro. I noticed a Lemon Drop Kid and Deputy Minister colt on the program, but other than that the sires were unrecognizable to me. The fractions the horses set on the track fairly pedestrian. But regardless I bet every race, although this time with nary a winner. My brother cashed in a few tickets. And we got Eddie Murphy to take a picture of us all, mountains in the backdrop, memorializing my brother’s South American winners.

I don’t know if it was a combination of the wine from lunch and the handful of Cusquena’s I had at the track, or not, but as the day’s light waned the charm of The Hipodromo grew on me further. At one point, I sat back in my seat, and stared lazily at the mountains, and I swear I got confused for a second. I thought ever so briefly I was looking at the San Gabriel’s from the grandstand at Santa Anita. Okay, it’s a stretch. But it happens that way, when you’re traveling, at a foreign track. Familiar sights and sounds- the white starting gate, the patter of the horses hooves hitting dirt, fan’s whistling as the herd turns from home - mixed with the foreign – the program in Spanish, laying a bet “ganador” instead of “to win” – it all starts to meld together. You lose a sense of where you are, and how you got there- reminded only that you’re trackside, and happy.

Hunter S. Thompson on the Kentucky Derby

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:28:48 -0500

In 1970, Hunter S. Thompson, the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which was later made into a film starring Johnny Depp), wrote an article for the short-lived publication, Scanlan’s Monthly. Thompson’s assignment was to cover the Kentucky Derby. The result was a hectic, drug-filled, booze-soaked, subjective, and original retelling of Derby weekend entitled “The Decadent and The Depraved.” And it is a must read for any fan of the track.

The article is credited as the birth of what Thompson would later coin, with the help of a Boston Globe editor Bill Cardoso, Gonzo Journalism. The word “Gonzo” was a word Thompson liked to use to describe his inventive journalistic style. In the words of Tom Wolfe, Thompson’s style is, “part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric.”

“The Decadent and The Depraved,” while about the Kentucky Derby, dedicates only four sentences to the actual race:

The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph's choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.
The article, rather, concerns to the world outside the rail, chiefly Thompson’s own psyche and impressions. Thompson’s impressions, however, are far from romantic, and little concerned with the magic of horse racing. For example, his portrait of the Derby crowd:
Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. ‘Mayblossom Senility’ (Steadman's phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much *curiosity*. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?
No loving homage to the halter-top dresses, or flowery bonnets. Thompson depicts men in “white linen suits” with “large brown whiskey stains on [their] front.” But this is Thompson’s focus- to depict the darker side of the Derby. And “The Decadent and The Depraved” depicts the underbelly of Derby weekend better than anything else I have ever seen in print. For those of you that have relished in the regalia of the Derby infield, you may be able to relate to the article more than you wish. Thompson says of his brief jaunt into the infield, “No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.”
Scanlan’s Monthly was perhaps the ideal breeding ground for Gonzo. The publication had a short shelf-life, for it went out of business in its first year of publication. Along with stagnant sales, it was criticized for its irresponsible muckraking of the Nixon Administration (those of you who have read Thompson’s, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in ’72, for all its anti-Nixon rhetoric, can probably see why Thompson fit in at Scanlan’s). The anti-establishment philosophy of Scanlan’s, coupled with the political climate and hippie culture of the early ‘70’s created a logical breeding ground for Thompson’s depiction of the Derby. “The Decadent and The Depraved” is a product of its era- it is a document of history, a reflection of one person’s view at a fixed point in time.

Thompson’s article also demonstrates how people’s view of horse racing says something about their approach to the world. How a piece of literature on horse racing can serve as a piece of history, as a tract of philosophy. Thompson’s view of horse racing was a logical precursor to some of his later philosophies of life. “So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is,” preludes, for example, the philosophy inherent in his later assertion that “it never got weird enough for me.” It is easy to see how Thompson arrived at the philosophical conclusions he did in life through contemplating the way in which he approached the Kentucky Derby. The irony of the article is that “the face,” the symbol Thompson was looking for at Derby weekend, was staring him in the mirror the whole time. Towards the end of the article he concludes:
My eyes had finally opened enough for me to focus on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking for. There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been looking for--and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...
Thompson is the culprit. He created the very “doomed atavistic culture” that he was looking for, and ultimately found. The doom was a product of the disillusioned, cynical way he chronicled the world around him. The Kentucky Derby was a mirror that reflected back to Thompson his dark projections.

When I read “The Decadent and The Depraved” I can’t help but to think of Hemingway. Hemingway was Thompson’s idol. And Thompson modeled his whole life and death after his idol. Thompson felt his early novel “The Rum Diary” would do for Puerto Rico what Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” did for Spain. Thompson, like Hemingway, ended his life with a shotgun in his home in Ketchum, Idaho. And like Hemingway with bullfighting and deep sea fishing, Thompson found his voice as a writer in the world of sports.

Thompson said of Hemingway, in a 1964 Rolling Stone article about his hero’s life and death, "He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him - not even when his friends came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun."

I run into the same philosophical dead-end, dark alleys, reading Hemingway as I do reading Thompson. I was literally depressed for days after I read Hemingway’s 1929 novel, A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway wrote this novel at the pinnacle of the Roaring ‘20s, amidst all the glee of that era (so arguably it is a work that is even more dark than “The Decadent and The Depraved” when considered in the context of its era). The book ends with the protagonist and narrator, Lt. Col. Tenente, retreating from the WWI battleground with his love Catherine (who is pregnant) to a quiet, snowy village in Switzerland, after he and his fellow troops were forced to flee the Italian front and the advancing Germans and Austrians. The novel ends with Tenente walking through the rain after Catherine and his child die in childbirth. The ending is nihilistic and self-destructive. It is no mystery that Hemingway struggled to progress in his creative life from such depths.

To sit down and read “The Decadent and The Depraved,” is to let Thompson’s dark view of the Kentucky Derby imprison your own. In giving way to the darkness, however, through the act of reading, it is possible to derive value from contemplating how much you agree or disagree with the various aspects of Thompson’s perspective.

In the same way that to read this article, or this site, is to concede some of your time to my perspective.

But this is the reader’s task- to perpetually try on and take off others’ hats- because it is only through this experimentation that the reader arrives at, inch-by-inch, their own ideals. Thompson’s Derby, my Derby, is not your Derby. My view from the rail is not your view from the rail. But all views, Thompson’s included, have a function, and deserve a voice.

Click here for an unabridged version of ”The Decadent and The Depraved.”

Summer at the Spa

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 17:56:21 -0500

It’s Monday morning and I am back at work, staring at the florescent rainbow of market quotes flickering on my computer screen, a helpful aid in coming down off the tote screens at the Spa. An email pops up from Carie, an Executive Administrator on the trading floor. Carie is a small woman from Long Island, ebullient and nice, talkative, but with me, the conversation had never strayed far from work. “So I here you were at Saratoga?” the email read. It lacked any of the formal salutations of her typical communication. It was curt and illicit. A secret correspondence between two heathens in a room of devout believers. Two people who over the years had strayed far from New York vacationing doctrine, abandoning the more typical environs of the Hamptons, to leave room for Saratoga Racing Season. One regular hoping to find another.   As I went to craft my response, waves of nostalgia for the Spa crashed over me. The cool air of the Adirondacks brushed across my neck. I could hear a band kicking up their first chords through the elm trees across the way at Siro’s. I could see track restaurant captains clad in their tuxedos, and thunderous, bay thoroughbreds trotting in the paddock between barn fences gleaming in a white coat of paint. I could hear a bugle sound, and the break of the starting gate echoing over those bright, vintage candy-cane awnings cladding the back of the grandstand, where they stand as Saratoga’s finest welcome to each new summer’s pilgrims. I could catch the whir of the ceiling fans lining the wooden rafters of the Clubhouse and the whisper of sliding feet on its sandy wooden floors, the whamming of bathroom screen doors. Who would have known? Carie? A regular at Saratoga? Saratoga, Carie, a fine place. Yes, I was there indeed. And I plan on going back. I’ll see you then.   But my reply email remains blank and unsent. Even to Carie, a regular, how could I tell her of dusty wooden beams, the trumpet music of summer, the excitement of a two-dollar dream, of horses who awaken primordial lust for some pre-historic time?  Sometimes in my mind, I get this image of ghosts, thousands of them, an apparitional horde clothed in garments of a bygone era: a sea of old, worn tuxedos, and glittering debutante gowns, yellow and pink summer bonnets, Union blues, black and white wing-tip shoes, lit cigars, gray fedora hats with burgundy bird feathers. And these ghosts, in their infinite splendor, are standing atop the famed, pitched roof of the Saratoga Racecourse Grandstand amidst its three, iconic, hipped gables. And they are humming collectively, in all directions, the words of Tennyson:   For men may come and men may go But I go on forever  I don’t know how to tell Carie, or anyone really, about how for me time moves differently in Saratoga. But what I do know is that if you want to hear the echo of screen doors slamming into the shimmering summer air, to see and hear the ghosts singing at Saratoga, to feel time fall off its axes, if only for the briefest of moments: you must go to The Spa; and you must, must be a regular.