Saratoga 150 Supplement

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150th annual meet, 2013

Hooves and HIsToRY

Saratoga Race Course marks 150th year as the biggest game in a fun-loving town

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By Paul Grondahl

cross the centuries, denizens of Saratoga Springs displayed a taste for the carbonated life and the edgier aspects of gambling.

The Spa was built upon this beguiling contradiction of healthiness and naughtiness.

In its first iteration, tourists chased the therapeutic claims of its mineral waters in the early 19th century and flocked to large downtown hotels. In more recent times, magnums of champagne have been uncorked at polo matches and ballet galas or by the swells and horsey set at soirees along North Broadway’s mansions in a version of Palm Beach transported north.

Through cycles of boom and bust, with the waxing and waning of public opinion on the ills versus the pleasures of gambling, Saratoga has embraced the money quote from journalist Nellie Bly in the New York World on Aug. 19, 1894: “Saratoga is the wickedest spot in the United States.

Crime is holding a convention there and vice is enjoying a festival such as it never dared approach before.”

Since the storied thoroughbred track, which celebrates its 150th year this season, opened along Union Avenue on Aug. 3, 1863 — a humble oval known as “Horse Haven”

across the street from what became an iconic gabled, Victorian-era grandstand — the city has given in to an addiction for the two-minute, pulse-pounding adrenaline rush of horse racing.

It is like a roll of the dice writ large, where a heavily favored horse can be an also-ran in front of 50,000 fans or a longshot can claim the $1 million Travers Stakes, the Midsummer Derby known as “the graveyard of champions.”

Meanwhile, across town in the 1870s, after betting all afternoon on the horse races, the high rollers came out after dark and gathered around the gaming tables upstairs in the Canfield Casino in Congress Park. Even for a nouveau riche 19th-century tycoon, there was nothing more thrilling than to let a bet of $125,000 (about $2 million in today’s dollars) ride on a single turn of a card.

Between the horses and the casino, Saratoga was a place where gambling could be mainlined around the clock.

It’s what drew the likes of John “Bet-a-Million” Gates to the Spa. A Gilded Age industrialist who made a fortune in the oil industry and marketing barbed wire, Gates was a compulsive gambler who bet heavily in all-night poker games.

Please see HISTORIC 6 ▶ $2.00

SARATOGA 150

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ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Happy Birthday The Adirondack Trust Company congratulates Saratoga on 150 years of spirit, energy, and world-class Thoroughbred racing. We are proud to have been part of this community since 1901, and we show our commitment by supporting hundreds of nonprofit organizations and dozens of community events each year. We know, even as we celebrate the past together, that Saratoga’s run is just beginning.

Warmest regards,

Charles V. Wait President & CEO, The Adirondack Trust Company Chairman, Saratoga 150 Committee

Illustration by Sharon Bolton

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Member FDIC

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

~ SARATOGA POLO ~ CELEBRATING 115 YEARS

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oward the end of the nineteenth century, Financier William Collins Whitney was named president of the Saratoga Race Track, rescuing it from decline. Whitney founded the Saratoga Polo Club shortly thereafter, in 1898.

Today, 115 years later, polo is still played on the historic Whitney Field. The racecourse would not be the same with out W.C. Whitney. After the death of Whitney, his son, Harry Payne Whitney, maintained the Saratoga Polo Club.

For the past 115 years, polo ponies have thundered up and down the fields of the Saratoga Polo Club, leaving an impact as exciting as in the times of warriors and princes.

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Polo is enjoying a fast growing patronage. Whether you choose the comfort of reserved seating by the clubhouse, or a family tailgate, be prepared to fall in love with the sport!

SO POL O AS

DON’T MISS THE ACTION THIS SEASON! M

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Au�ust 2 & 4 Whitney Cup Tournament Au�ust 9 & 11 Zappone Chrysler RAM Polo Hall of Fame Challen�e Cup Au�ust 16 & 18 The Hector and Susan Barrantes Cup Tournament The RBC Wealth Mana�ement Barrantes Cup Au�ust 23 & 25 The Ylvisaker Cup Tournament Au�ust 30 & September 1 The SPA Anniversary Cup Tournament

BUY TICKETS

Online at SaratogaPolo.com, by phone at 518.584.8108 or at the gate.

CLUBHOUSE ADMISSION Enjoy air-conditioned comfort.

Full cash bar and food available.

$40/PREMIUM RESERVED $30/RESERVED $20/LAWN AND BLEACHER SEATINg

GENERAL FIELDSIDE ADMISSION

Pull your car right up to the action and watch from your tailgate, lawn chairs or picnic blanket.

$30/CARLOAD $50/RESERVED

Polo is Played Fridays and Sundays July 12 - September 1 at 5:30pm

Purchase Tickets OnLine at SaratogaPolo.Com or call 518.584.8108

Create Your Own History in a Place of Legends Imagine The Possibilities… …in a settin� of wide-open fields and scenic beauty

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et the timeless ele�ance of Sarato�a Polo serve as the �lorious destination for your event. Imagine hosting your special event in our classic Clubhouse all year round, or in the tented luxury of the outdoors durin� our Historic Whitney Field spectacular summer season.

Visit SaratogaPolo.Com or call 518.584.8108

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TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

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”Armory Garage congratulates the Saratoga Racecourse on its 150th Anniversary!

ARMORY GARAGE anALBANY TRADITION 1918

Anthony Metzner opens a business on Sherman Street in Albany.

Metzner’s property was close to the Washington Avenue Armory so he named it “Armory Garage”.

1928

1930’s 1940’s

1980’s

1990’s

1996

Armory Vision

2006

2011 2012

Metzner moves Armory Garage to 15+ acres at Central & Colvin in Albany.

Armory Garage becomes a Chrysler Dealer selling Plymouths and Desoto’s in 1931. James A. Clark Sr. joined Metzner to form an Armory family management team that continues today!

After World War II Metzner’s sons, Stanley and Robert as well as James A. Clark Jr. join the business.

Donald Metzner joins the family business as the third generation member.

Joe Kramer becomes VP of Armory Garage Inc. James A. Clark Jr. ’s daughter Betsy joins the Armory family.

The Armory Vision sign is built on Central Ave with state of the art HDTV quality images.

Today and

beyond:

“As my Gr andfather repeatedly our priorit told me, y is taking care of the We strive customer. each and every day that. We th to do just ank each a nd every o customers ne of our , for witho ut them, w not be cele e would brating ou r 95th yea something r! It’s that we ne ver forgot !”

— Donald

Metzner, P resident

The opening of the new Chrysler Jeep Showroom at Armory Center Armory becomes the Capital Region’s exclusive FIAT Dealer!

Armory adds Dodge, SRT and RAM Trucks. In doing so, Armory becomes the only area dealer to carry the complete Chrysler Group line of vehicles.

“

Central at Colvin Ave. Albany 518-641-7777

www.armoryauto.com

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In one marathon gambling session at Canfield Casino, according to lore, he was down about $500,000 (roughly $9 million today) but he rallied after many hours at the table and returned to his Broadway hotel as the sun was rising with a mere $125,000 lost.

“People love the action of Saratoga. Horse racing is exciting and there’s no denying that betting on the races is exciting,” said Jim Melia, an associate historian at the National Museum of Racing who relocated from Manchester, N.H., to Saratoga Springs with his wife, Faith, after retiring in 2006 from a career in banking.

He has loved horse racing since he was a teenager and has visited more than 100 tracks around the country.

“There is no place else like Saratoga,” Melia said. “It’s simply the best.”

Prior to its wicked streak, the city was put on the map by a slim scientific treatise published

by Dr. John Steel in 1817, “An Analysis of the Mineral Waters of Saratoga and Ballston,” which supported medicinal claims.

Doctors began recommending a month’s stay, with a cup of mineral water from a particular spring in the morning, a second spring in the afternoon and a third in the evening.

There were more than 200 springs tapped around the city at its peak in the Victorian era, compared to 21 springs in operation today. It was an accident of geology. The remnants of shallow tropical seas from 500 million years ago were trapped in ancient bedrock below layers of sandstone and limestone sediment. When faults formed 10,000 years ago, the sulfurous mineral water reached the surface and could be collected at free springs and public pavilions — each with a different mineral composition and a unique taste.

“The mineral waters were the vitamin supplements of their day,” said James Parillo, executive director of the Saratoga Springs History Museum and

curator of a Saratoga 150 exhibit at Canfield Casino titled “The People Behind the Track.”

“Some of the therapeutic claims were legitimate and some were quackery,” Parillo said.

“It was a tourist destination for the waters long before the track opened. The springs were free and working-class and regular people could rub shoulders with the likes of J.P. Morgan in Saratoga.”

Ethnically, the city was built upon the backs of Irish and Italian immigrant labor on the railroad and in its hotels, spa baths, bottling plants, textile mills and breweries. In the 1830s and 1840s, the city’s west side around Beekman Street became an Irish enclave and was dubbed “Dublin.” A second wave of immigration came in the 1880s and 1890s, when Italians came in large numbers and settled on the west side.

The naughty side to the city’s personality was kept on the down-low, indulged but not discussed. What happened in Saratoga, it seemed, stayed in Saratoga.

“There are very few records of what really went on here at the casino,” Parillo said.

The official visitor’s guide to Saratoga Springs in 1887 offered this purple prose PG version: “Its mineral waters flow in exhaustless abundance from year to year. While the waters flow, Saratoga will flourish in all the glory of its splendid places.”

The gushing reputation of the springs grew. Bottling plants sprouted and the market for Saratoga water spread across the U.S. and to Europe. But the commercial water boom was too much of a good thing. Overpumping depleted the springs in the early 1900s and in 1909 the state passed laws that placed limits on water extraction that rationed and protected the resource.

Eventually, the novelty wore off, mineral water sales went flat and the arrival of the automobile and expansion of the railroad network opened up long-distance travel. Saratoga the tourist destination began a period of decline in the early 1900s. It needed to diversify.

Saratoga’s narrative is sprinkled with outsized entrepreneurs and colorful characters whose time upon the stage of America’s summer place was at turns triumphant and tragic.

Consider the poor sot Caleb Mitchell, a Troy native who started as a newsboy, made a fortune running illegal gambling operations and migrated north where he became village president of Saratoga Springs in the late 1800s. Wealthy and eccentric, Cale, as he was known, was a partner in the racetrack and owned a gambling hall near the track as well as saloons and bookmaking operations in Albany and Troy.

Mitchell’s “conduct led his acquaintances to believe that he was not in full possession of his mental faculties,” according to an obituary in The New York Times on Jan. 29, 1901. Mitchell shot himself to death outside the door of the downtown office of state Sen. Edgar Brackett. Mitchell had feuded publicly with Brackett over a bill that the senator sponsored that gave Richard Canfield a virtual monopoly on gambling in the city. Mitchell purchased a revolver earlier that day and said he needed it to shoot

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ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Times Union archive photos

At top, bus at old Lincoln Baths in Saratoga Springs in 1918. Above, Victor Herbert plays violin and leads a 1900 morning concert at the Grand Union hotel in Saratoga Springs.

cats. Authorities thought he intended to shoot Brackett, but since he was not in his office he walked out, became agitated and turned the gun on himself. “He fell dead on the door mat,” the Times said.

Others who made headlines were outsiders who left their mark with shows of conspicuous consumption and a celebrity forged 150 years before TMZ.

Thank ou Y

Some of their flashy accoutrements remain, such as the circa-1900 purple velour camisole and lacy pink lace-up corset worn by starlet Lillian Russell.

There are roulette and faro tables in the high-stakes gamblers’ room frequented by the likes of Diamond Jim Brady, a bejeweled dandy and raconteur who made millions as a financier in New

Please see HISTORIC 10 ▶

To the horse racing community for its 20 years of support for the premier party which kicks off the Saratoga season, the Siro’s Cup to benefit the Center for Disability Services.

For more than 71 years, in the Capital Region and beyond, the Center has been the place for people with disabilities and chronic medical conditions to go for innovative services and expert care.

Friends like you help to make the Center the place where people get better at life.

www.cfdsny.org

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

Getting to the track

SARATOGA 150

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Once upon a time, the horses at Saratoga pulled buggies

By Tim O’Brien

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ou name a way to travel, and people have probably used it to get to Saratoga.

From horse and buggy to cars on the Northway, from trains to planes to steamboats, the crowds have found many ways over the past 150 years to get to the race track.

Sportswriter Red Smith, in the mid20th century, described the way to get to Saratoga this way: “You drive north for about 175 miles, turn left on Union Avenue and go back 100 years.”

In its earliest years, the locals arrived by horse and buggy, while guests coming from New York City and other distant points took the train.

Mary C. Lynn, a professor of American studies at Skidmore College, notes with amusement that a 1945 film, “Saratoga Trunk,” showed Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman making their way to Saratoga by rail.

“The trunk in this case is not a suitcase,” she said. It refers to the “trunk line” that took passengers from New York City to the August place to be.

Trains began running to Saratoga in 1828, said Jim Shaughnessy, author of a history of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad.

That predates the first thoroughbred racing, in 1863, or the opening of the track a year later. Saratoga Springs already had begun to boom by then, thanks to travelers arriving to bathe in its renowned mineral waters and gamble in John Morrissey’s casinos. Morrissey started racing to give his customers something to do during the day, said Allan Carter, historian for the National Museum of Racing. Saratoga was already a popular rail destination before the first race was run.

In 1901, the Saratoga Limited line was launched, promising to take passengers the 180 miles from New York to Saratoga Springs in 210 minutes every day but Sunday.

“During the grand era, that was the way to go,” Shaughnessy said. “They had special trains from New York City to Saratoga, the Saratoga Limited.”

At the time, the railroad station was in downtown Saratoga Springs, behind the two major hotels of the day, the United States and the Grand Union. The Price Chopper supermarket on Railroad Avenue stands today where the station once welcomed visitors.

Rich travelers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries paid to have their own private cars attached to the train from

New York, Shaughnessy said. Once they arrived in Saratoga, their cars would be unhooked from the train and they would live in them — or stay in a hotel or rented residence, as people still do today.

In a move that would now be unthinkable, horse owner Stephen Sanford walked his horses from Amsterdam to Saratoga over two days, then ran them in the meet. Sanford ran the stable Hurricana around the turn of the 20th century.

He would leave at 1 a.m. two days before the meet with 25 to 35 horses, Carter said. Half would have riders, while the rest would be led. Sanford’s staff would stop and water the horses, letting them rest, at hotels along the way.

Steamboats also provided a popular way to travel in the early years, Lynn said.

“People came to Saratoga first by a combination of sailing up the Hudson River and then getting a horse and carriage to go drink the waters,” she said.

Many trackgoers would take a boat up the Hudson River, disembark in Troy or Albany, and then take a horse and carriage ride up to Saratoga.

“There would have been horse and buggy roads,” Lynn said. “It was probably really uncomfortable.”

From 1885 to the turn of the century, trolley lines also brought passengers to the track from Schenectady and from Troy, Shaughnessy said.

In 1894, famed journalist Nellie Bly wrote a scathing depiction of the town, calling it “our wickedest summer resort.”

But she wrote with delight in The World newspaper about the view of vehicles on their way to the course.

“The Saratoga race-course is a very pretty one, and the wide boulevard that leads to it presents a lovely sight as vehicles of all descriptions fly gayly to and from the course,” she wrote.

By the 1920s, cars were becoming more and more commonplace. Car races were held on what is now Fifth Avenue in the 1920s, Carter said.

By the 1930 Travers race, he said, “there were so many people (in cars), they just parked their cars up and down Union Avenue.”

In the mid-1950s, the state began building the Adirondack Northway, which would transform Saratoga County from mostly farmland to bedroom communities. The road was finished in 1967, and the route to the racetrack suddenly got much easier.

“You can just get off the Northway and walk to the track if you want,” Lynn said. ▶ tobrien@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545092 ■ @timobrientu

The Saratoga Race Course and Price Chopper strive to bring the best to the Capital Region and beyond.

When the Times Union recently asked its readers to rate area supermarkets, Price Chopper was voted best for the ninth consecutive year.

Chopper Shoppers know that Price Chopper delivers the best in fresh and low prices every singe week. Our dedicated teammates work hard to bring you the best shopping experience possible. And, for more than 80 years we have been in the community giving back to the families we serve.

The Saratoga Race Course has an even longer history of bringing the best to the area. Only the best horses, jockeys and trainers come to compete at the nation’s most beautiful horse racing course.

From the oldest locally owned supermarket to America’s oldest sporting venue...

Congratulations Saratoga Race Course on 150 years!

In The Community. For Good.

Times Union Archives; George S. Bolster Photographic Collection of the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

Above, the D&H train station on Division Street in Saratoga Springs in 1937. At right, people had to turn a crank to start their car, and behind is the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Bridge, twin bridges, on the Northway.

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150 Game changers Community leaders, trainers, jockeys — and horses — whose influence helped shape Saratoga and the racing industry.

Staff writers ■■■Gideon Putnam: Settled among

Native Americans near High Rock Spring in 1789. He operated a sawmill and created a street grid, bathhouse

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

The track, as seen in vintage and new images Photos by Skip Dickstein

and the region’s first hotel. Known as the city’s founding father, he reserved parcels for the area’s first church, school and cemetery. Putnam died in a scaffolding collapse at the age of 49 in 1812, and was the first person to be buried in a cemetery named after him.

■■■Solomon Northup: He came to

Saratoga Springs in 1834 as a free man. Seven years later, two men lured the violinist off Broadway with the promise of work in New York City

Courtesy The George S. Bolster Collection at the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

Betting windows and Washington, D.C. They sold Northup to a slave trader. After 12 years as a slave in Louisiana, Northup regained his freedom and wrote the book “12 Years A Slave,” which Brad Pitt and others have turned into a Hollywood thriller.

Above, bettors line up to place wagers at Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs in this vintage photo (date unknown). At right, with a few modifications, the area looks much the same on Monday, July 22, early in the track’s historic 150th season.

■■■John Morrissey: Immigrated

from Ireland, brawled his way out of Troy and became a famous gambler, Tammany Hall politician and boxing champion who entertained presi-

dents. He adopted Saratoga Springs as his hometown and founded thoroughbred racing there at a trotting course called Horse Haven on Aug. 3, 1863. “Old Smoke” founded the Canfield Casino in 1870 and died eight years later in the Adelphi Hotel.

■■■The Veitch family: Got their start

in Saratoga racing horses as early as the 1890s, and to this day the family continues to call Saratoga home.

Many of them work in government positions and contribute greatly to the city.

■■■William Travers: Struck it rich

on Wall Street and came to define 19th century high society, becoming a Please see CHANGERS 9 ▶

Courtesy The George S. Bolster Collection at the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

The rail

Above, an apparently all-male crowd, sporting nearly identical outfits and hats, crowds the rail in this vintage photo (date unknown). At left, a more diverse group of patrons gathers on the rail in front of the clubhouse on Monday, July 22.

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

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member of 27 private clubs and president of the New York Athletic Club.

He joined Morrissey in 1864 as a founder of Saratoga Race Course, and became its first president. The track’s preeminent race is named after Travers, and he won its first running with a horse named Kentucky.

■■■William Whitney: President of

the Saratoga Association in 1901, and under him the track was redeveloped and expanded. He singlehandedly revived the Spa from one of its lowest points in history.

■■■James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsim-

mons: Trained horses from 18941963 and, at the age of 88, won his last of four Spa training titles in 1962. He won the Travers twice, the Alabama eight times and got to the winner’s circle 10 times in the Saratoga Cup. ■■■Frank Mc-

Courtesy The George S. Bolster Collection at the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

Turf Terrace

Above, the fashionable patrons of the Turf Terrace dining area, located on the third and fourth floor of the clubhouse overlooking the finish line, were photographed by H.G. Ashby in 1929. At left, the Turf Terrace as seen on July 22.

Cabe: This Hall of Famer was the first trainer to win three Travers Stakes.

He did it in 1886 (Inspector B.), Sir Dixon (1888) and Sir John (1890).

■■■James McLaughlin: This Hall of Famer dominated big Saratoga races in the 1880s, winning the Travers four times (1881, 1883, 1886, 1888) and Alabama three times (1883, 1886, 1888).

■■■Issac Burns Murphy: The Afri-

can-American rider won the 1879 Travers, and it was said that he won 49 of 55 races at the Spa in 1888. He was part of the first class at the Hall of Fame in 1955.

■■■Duke of Magenta: He broke his maiden at the Spa in the Flash Stakes in 1877 and then took off the following year. He won 11 of 12 starts, the only loss coming in the Jersey Derby. The Duke is just one of three horses to win the Preakness, Withers, Belmont and Travers (the others are fellow Hall of Famers Man o’War and Native Dancer).

■■■Hindoo: He raced from 1880-82 and won 30 of the 35 races he entered. He had a record year in 1881, winning 18 of the 20 races in which he ran, four of them Saratoga stakes races, including the Travers. He was part of the inaugural Hall of Fame class in 1955.

■■■Kentucky: The answer to a trivia

question, he won the first running of the Travers (1864), which was named for one of his owners, William Travers. Three days later, he won the Sequel Stakes, also at the Spa. He also won two Saratoga Cups.

■■■Kingston: Record-wise, he is the

The paddock

Courtesy The George S. Bolster Collection at the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

In a ritual that has changed little over the decades, horses leave the paddock under the watchful eyes of bettors in, above, a vintage photo (date unknown) and, at right, on July 22.

most dominant runner ever. He won a whopping 89 times (the most by any runner) in 138 starts. He raced until 1894, when he was 10 years old. In 1888, he won three stakes races at the Spa. Despite all his wins, he bankrolled only $140,195. Imagine what those numbers would look like today.

■■■Los Angeles: She is not in the Hall

of Fame, and never won a Triple Crown race. But, from 1886-91 she raced 25 times at Saratoga and won 18 of them. Sixteen of those wins came in stakes races.

■■■Luke Blackburn:

Saddling

Note the differences in clothing preferences among track personnel tasked with saddling horses in the paddock at Saratoga Race Course in, at left, a vintage photo (date unknown) and, at right, on July 22.

In 1880, he won 22 of 24 starts and four of them were stakes races at Saratoga. For his career, which went from 1879-81, he won 25 of 39 starts. He was named after the governor of Kentucky; he went into the Hall of Fame in 1956.

■■■Ruthless: In the first five runnings of the Travers, fillies won it three times. Ruthless was the second, in 1867. She won seven of her 11 career starts and was second in the other four. She also was the first filly to win the Belmont; since then, only two others have won the Test of Champions in 145 years.

Please see CHANGERS 14 ▶ Courtesy The George S. Bolster Collection at the Historical Society

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York City. He was known for his extravagant jewelry collection and an enormous appetite — he could consume dozens of raw oysters and a 16-ounce, 2-inchthick prime rib in a sitting.

A confirmed bachelor, Brady horsed around Saratoga with paramour Russell on his arm and tongues wagged over their larger-than-life relationship.

“We only found evidence that they were good friends,” Parillo said.

At the center of the track’s sesquicentennial history looms John Morrissey, a Troy-born force of nature with broad shoulders, bearish build, bushy beard and booming voice. He grew up poor, dropped out of school and became a champion bareknuckle boxer feared for “sledgehammer fists.” The marathon slugfests in that era only ended when one pugilist beat the other senseless; one bare-knuckle epic lasted 89 rounds. Outside the ring, Morrissey was a street thug and gang member indicted as a teenager on charges of burglary, battery and assault with intent to kill.

His checkered past was not an impediment to a career in New York state politics. Morrissey became a Tammany-backed U.S. congressman who later testified against Boss Tweed and was elected as a state senator on an anti-Tammany ticket.

In Saratoga, Morrissey opened a gambling den in 1861 known as the Club House Casino, a precursor to the Canfield Casino, which drew the wealthy and famous, including John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant. It was a palace of decadence, with menus that included caviar, quail, vintage wines and expensive cigars. The married Morrissey had capacious appetite and he conducted public affairs with young ingenues Kate Ridgely and Lolita Fernandez.

Of course, women were rarely allowed in Morrissey’s testosterone-soaked boys’

club. The Canfield Casino had a women’s gallery on the main floor dubbed “the library,” where ladies in hoop skirts, bustles, silk, brocade and lace convened for tea and pastries and to gossip, read the local newspapers and exchange tips about fashion. The museum has a remarkable collection of 1,500 period dresses, hats and shoes that will be displayed this summer.

Men and women existed in parallel universes in Saratoga.

Even at the track in the early eras, women were relegated to a separate area for spectating and betting. The key was to provide enough diversions for both genders to keep them returning summer after summer.

“Morrissey realized he needed something to keep his gamblers and their wives busy during the day because they could soak in the spa waters for only so long without getting bored,” said Allan Carter, historian at the National Museum of Racing and co-author with Mike Kane of a new book, “150 Years of Racing in Saratoga.”

Morrissey advertised thoroughbred racing at a trotting oval known as “Horse Haven” he leased on the north side of Union Avenue near today’s Oklahoma training track. The first race on Aug. 3, 1863, just one month after the bloody Battle of Gettsyburg, proved a popular diversion from the the gruesome reports of the Civil War. More than 15,000 spectators arrived on foot and by horsedrawn carriage and paid $1 for an admission card. The four-day meet featured best-of-three heat races with 27 horses from 14 racing stables that competed for a $2,700 purse.

The first race was won by Lizzie W., trained by Bill Bird, an African-American trainer, and ridden by Abe Sewell, a one-eyed black jockey.

The wagering initially was informal, with person-to-person betting. This later morphed to a ring of dozens of bookies from New York City. Folks liked the action and socialites were hooked on the grace and speed of thoroughbreds, but they lodged

several complaints after the first meet. There were not enough places to sit; trees and hillocks obscured the backstretch from patrons; the turns were too tight; the track was too narrow and it was 297 yards short of the advertised 1 mile.

At the end of the inaugural August meet, Morrissey formed the Saratoga Racing Association and they paid $20,600 for 94 acres across Union Avenue, the present site. They built a grandstand that offered plenty of seating and opened the second meet at the new facility in August 1864.

“Morrissey couldn’t put his name on the track because he was a thug,” Carter said. “A brilliant thug, but a thug.”

He tapped his rich patrician pals Cornelius Vanderbilt, William B. Travers and Leonard Jerome to give the new Saratoga track legitimacy and cachet. It flourished and helped Saratoga rival Newport among the country’s blue bloods. Morrissey died of complications from pneumonia in his suite at the Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga in 1878 at age 47. By then, the seeds of horse racing he planted had flourished.

There were other intriguing footnotes in the vibrant annals of the city, underscoring its resourcefulness. After antigambling crusaders shut down Canfield Casino in 1906, the

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Times Union archive

George S. Bolster Photographic Collection of the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs.

At top, Marylou Whitney Gala, 1984. Above, railroad car tycoon Diamond Jim Brady, seen in Saratoga in 1904.

gambling simply shifted across town to the rural outskirts and lakehouses around Saratoga Lake and Lake Lonely that were transformed into casinos, including Riley’s, Newman’s, The Brook, Arrowhead, Piping Rock and the Chicago Club. During Prohibition, they were centers of rum-running operations and the booze never stopped flowing.

A series of investigations led by the state Legislature ended the last vestige of vice when Riley’s Lakehouse shut down in 1953.

The gilded age of Saratoga continues to echo down history’s long byways to this very day.

Marylou Whitney, the doyenne of Spa society, is the wife of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney, who died in 1992 at 93. The founder of Pan American Airways, philanthropist and patron of horse racing and the arts was a grandson of William Collins Whitney. The family’s patriarch was a railway tycoon and financier who established the Whitney family as one of the golden names in American thoroughbred racing with its stable colors of Eton blue and brown.

After the nefarious Gottfried Waldbaum ran the track into the ground with crooked ways that sullied Saratoga’s reputation, William Collins Whitney rescued thoroughbred racing in Saratoga. In 1901, he bought out Walbaum for $365,000 along with a group of his wealthy friends, who enlarged the grandstand, improved the track and and restored respectability to the race course. A century later, Marylou Whitney bears that mantle as Saratoga’s biggest booster and proudest standardbearer.

Another connection to the track’s storied past can be found in the family tree of George R. Hearst III, publisher and CEO of the Times Union. His great-great grandfather, George Hearst, a rancher, mining tycoon and U.S. senator from California, was part of a syndicate that bought the track in 1890 after it had fallen into disfavor behind a crusade against gambling led by Wall Street titan Spencer Trask.

Hearst had a racing stable and was named president of the Saratoga Racing Association in 1890.

Sen. George Hearst died on Feb. 28, 1891, six months after he became a part-owner of the track. ▶ pgrondahl@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5623 ■ @PaulGrondahl

NY

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SPAC.ORG

SEP 6-8 CONGRATULATIONS SARATOGA 150!

Don’t miss the Saratoga 150 Cocktail Challenge, re-creating the Saratoga 150’s signature cocktails at the Saratoga Wine & Food and Concours d’Elegance Mixology Masters SEP 6-8 at SPAC!

THE FINAL EVENT OF SARATOGA 150!

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Track giveaways

|

Nothing brings out the crowds like a folding chair

By Dennis Yusko

F

Aug. 12, 2007

Saratoga folding chair

72,745

Aug. 17, 2003

Wall clock

71,337

Aug. 14, 2005

Stadium blanket

70,792

Aug. 13, 2006

Saratoga Sports bag

70,603

Aug. 22, 2004

Pint glass set

70,175

Aug. 31, 2003

Funny Cide T-shirt

68,029

Aug. 5, 2001

T-shirt

66,942

Sept. 3, 2006

Saratoga stadium blanket

66,311

Aug. 15, 1999

Steins

66,194

Aug. 17, 2008

Long sleeve T-shirt

65,598

chive photos Times Union ar

or some, the words alone make the earth tremble.

The New York Racing Association began handing out “free swag” with admission at certain Saratoga dates at least 30 years ago. The tradition started with a baseball cap or T-shirt, no one at NYRA is certain.

Giveaway days remind many fans of spinners — those who pay admission multiple times for extra swag — and bobbleheads, which were offered oncea-summer until recently. But bobbleheads don’t even break into the top 10 giveaways of all time, according to NYRA. The dolls were typically handed out on Thursdays, so attendance was less. Here are the 10 most attended giveaways at Saratoga Race Course:

Source: Ed Lewi Associates

Preserving history.

Honoring excellence.

191 Union Avenue • Saratoga Springs, NY • (518) 584-0400 • www.racingmuseum.org

Oklahoma Training Track Tours

Find out why this beautiful and historic site, located across the street from Saratoga Race Course, is a favorite base for leading trainers. Our behind-the-scenes tours, offered in cooperation with the New York Racing Association, are available from June through October. This walking tour covers approximately one mile and lasts for an hour and a half. Tour attendees must be over the age of 10. For questions or reservations: (518) 584-0400, ext. 120 or nmredu2@racingmuseum.net

Saratoga Sesquicentennial Exhibit

Join us this summer for the opening of the Alfred Z. Solomon Sesquicentennial Exhibit: Celebrating 150 years of racing in Saratoga.

Our illustrated timeline allows racing fans, both old and new, to explore Saratoga’s racing past and reminisce about their own memories at the Spa. Featuring an interactive exhibit with historic films and photographs, this exhibit will be open through 2014.

Visit us this summer as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of organized Thoroughbred racing in Saratoga Springs Featuring special exhibits, public programs, and our annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Friday, August 9 at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Pavilion. For more information, please visit our website.

During the Saratoga Racing Meet, the Museum is open daily from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

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ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

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SARATOGA 150

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Much of race course’s architecture dates to the track’s early days

S

1864: The first grandstand

aratoga Race Course is made up of more than 200 buildings, many of which — particularly the barns — were built in the earliest years of the venue.

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

built on the site where Saratoga Race Course is today was 200 feet long by 30 feet wide. No trace of it or the track survived. It was built to replace a former trotting track on the other side of the street, where the first thoroughbred meeting was held in August 1863.

1903: Oklahoma

training stables and track built. Land acquisition allowed the owner of the race course at the time, the Saratoga Association led by William Collins Whitney, to turn the former trotting ring across the street into a training facility.

1865: An expanded grand-

stand and an open-air stand greeted patrons and provided 4,500 seats.

From the collection of Ralph Gosse, Albany.

1975: Big Red Spring added to

backyard. Originally built in 1859 to shelter a spring on Excelsior Avenue, it was moved to its present location and dedicated to Man O’ War.

1919:

2000: Three entrance

Auto entrance and parking lot built between Union and Lincoln avenues to accommodate Saratoga’s millionaires, who no longer arrived by horse and carriage.

1863: First Saratoga

meet held on the oval near the Oklahoma Training Track.

John Carl D’Annibale / Times Union

pavilions constructed at Union Avenue and Wright Street gates.

John Carl D’Annibale / Times Union

1977:

Paved paths and redand-white canopies added to back yard.

1902: Grandstand

1985-1991:

enlarged to hold 6,000 people; Clare Court private stables added.

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

Carousel Pavilion added to grandstand. Designed by Ewing Cole Cherry Parsky. In 1986, the walking ring and saddling shed were enclosed by fencing, a place now called the paddock. Four acres were set aside for the back yard, furnished with picnic tables, betting windows and TV monitors.

1937: A new betting ring 1901:

was built to accommodate the rush of interest in horse racing. Many states voted to allow legal, parimutuel betting. The ring designed by Albany architect Marcus T. Reynolds introduced white cast iron. It was 360 feet by 85 feet.

Times Union archive

Sanford Court was first built as a private stable area when the race course property doubled in size at the turn of the century.

1892:

New clubhouse, grandstand and betting ring added, designed by Boston architect Herbert Langford Warren. Although now eclipsed by a bigger structure, the grandstand and its spires survive today, giving the race course its badge as the oldest continuously used stand in the country.

Source: “The Spa: Saratoga’s Legendary Race Course” by Paul Roberts and Isabelle Taylor

Courtesy of Saratoga Springs Historical Museum, George S. Bolster collection

1963-1965: Field stand and

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

1927: Old clubhouse demolished, replaced with one

designed by Samuel Adams Clark that had 1,200 box seats and capacity for 3,000 patrons. The clubhouse and the grandstand were connected, as they still are today.

The influence of the wrought iron can be seen throughout the race course.

betting ring replaced by grandstand extension, designed by Arthur Froehlich & Associates of Los Angeles. It nearly doubled the building’s capacity.

1940: Parimutuel machines come to Saratoga on the heels

of the state Legislature’s vote to legalize gambling on horse races.

Some 300 betting and cashing windows installed.

Page design, illustration by Carin Lane / Times Union

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t the spa TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

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Skip Dickstein / Times Union

1903: Oklahoma

training stables and track built. Land acquisition allowed the owner of the race course at the time, the Saratoga Association led by William Collins Whitney, to turn the former trotting ring across the street into a training facility.

1863: First Saratoga

meet held on the oval near the Oklahoma Training Track.

John Carl D’Annibale / Times Union

John Carl D’Annibale / Times Union

Grandstand hold 6,000 re Court bles added.

1985-1991:

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

Carousel Pavilion added to grandstand. Designed by Ewing Cole Cherry Parsky. In 1986, the walking ring and saddling shed were enclosed by fencing, a place now called the paddock. Four acres were set aside for the back yard, furnished with picnic tables, betting windows and TV monitors.

1937: A new betting ring

was built to accommodate the rush of interest in horse racing. Many states voted to allow legal, parimutuel betting. The ring designed by Albany architect Marcus T. Reynolds introduced white cast iron. It was 360 feet by 85 feet.

Courtesy of Saratoga Springs Historical Museum, George S. Bolster collection

1963-1965: Field stand and

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

Skip Dickstein / Times Union

d clubhouse demolished, replaced with one amuel Adams Clark that had 1,200 box seats and 000 patrons. The clubhouse and the grandstand ed, as they still are today.

The influence of the wrought iron can be seen throughout the race course.

betting ring replaced by grandstand extension, designed by Arthur Froehlich & Associates of Los Angeles. It nearly doubled the building’s capacity.

1940: Parimutuel machines come to Saratoga on the heels

of the state Legislature’s vote to legalize gambling on horse races.

Some 300 betting and cashing windows installed.

Page design, illustration by Carin Lane / Times Union

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SARATOGA 150

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CHANGERS

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■■■Spencer Trask: He built Yaddo, the artist retreat recently named a National Historic Landmark. The Gilded Age investor convinced state leaders to preserve land containing the city’s natural springs, which led to the establishment of Saratoga Spa State Park, the city’s Visitor Center and the Spirit of Life statue. All four of his children predeceased him. Trask died in a freak train accident on New Year’s Eve while riding to New York City to lobby for Saratoga Springs.

■■■Katrina Trask: Wife of Spencer

Trask, spent much of her life developing and financing Yaddo, an artists’ community in Saratoga. She was also a writer, publishing many works before her death in 1922.

■■■Charles Ferdinand Dowd: He worked as a Methodist minister and principal at a girls’ boarding school that became Skidmore College.

The Yale graduate created national standardized time zones that were implemented, initially by railroad companies, in 1883. The creator of standard time died an ironic death in 1904, when a locomotive struck him as he walked across tracks in Saratoga Springs.

■■■Phil and Mike Dwyer: Brooklyn

businessmen, who together owned a horse racing operation. The Dwyer brothers’ stable won the Travers Stakes five times in the span of only 10 years. The very famous stable was disbanded by the brothers in 1890 and all the horses were auctioned to competitors.

■■■Richard Canfield: One of the first to develop the modern-day “resort casino,” he was also a wellknown gambling operator. In 1893, he bought the Club House in Saratoga, turning it into “The Casino.” It became a huge success and is a rich part of Saratoga’s history. In 1914 he fractured his skull from falling in a subway station, and eventually died from related complications.

■■■August Belmont II: Born in

1853, he was known for being a successful horse breeder and opening Belmont Park Racetrack on Long Island. Mainly inspired by his father, Belmont II was the founder and chairman of The Jockey Club and remained a chairman until his death.

In 1913, he won the Travers Stakes at Saratoga with his prized horse Rock View.

■■■James Ben Ali Haggin: Became a multimillionaire by 1880 in the hysteria of the Gold Rush. With his fortunes, Haggin became a thoroughbred horse owner and breeder. In 1903, Haggin’s horse Ada Nay won the Travers Stakes. This was the last year that the Travers Stakes had a track length of 11/4 miles.

■■■Thomas Healey: This Hall of Famer won the Travers three times, in 1906 (Gallavant), 1919 (Hannibal) and 1923 (Wilderness). He also got to the Spa winner’s circle twice in the Hopeful and Sanford. He was the top trainer at the Spa four times: 1914, 1917, 1918 and 1925.

■■■Sam Hildreth: The first time he won a training title at the Spa was 1910. He won his sixth — and last — in 1929. Along the way, he won a record 20 races in 1922, a mark that stood until Bill Mott won 22 races in 2001.

He won the Travers twice and trained 10 champions, including Hall of Famers Grey Lag and Zev. ■■■John Madden: His only Travers win came in 1905, but he was a three-

Please see CHANGERS 15 ▶

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Saratoga StorieS? You bet Spa City and environs have inspired myriad writers, filmmakers and other creative types to feature region

By Amy Biancolli

W

ith its glittering society and Revolutionary past, the region in and around Saratoga Springs is rich in all the ways that matter to storytellers. It’s ripe for intrigue, full of character and characters, real and imagined, from the worlds of crime, bath-soaked wealth, battlefield heroics and horse racing.

No wonder, then, that the Spa City has found its way into movies and novels. The list is long and covers a lot of thematic territory, but it boils down to a few genres: Horses. History. Mystery. All three have been known to overlap — and keep in mind, “history” can encompass both the noble and the sordid.

Times Union archive photos

Robert Redford and Kristin Scott Thomas in ‘The Horse Whisperer.’

Horses “Seabiscuit,” the 2003 film (based on Laura Hillenbrand’s book) about the underdog thoroughbred who wowed the crowds during the Great Depression.

Some of the footage was shot at Saratoga Race Course.

“Tea Biscuit” is the name of the thoroughbred in “It Ain’t Hay,” a 1943 Abbott and Costello comedy about a muddle over a horse that all comes to a head at the racetrack. It’s a remake of the 1935 film “Princess O’Hara,” itself based on a Collier’s story by Saratoga track habitué Damon Runyon.

“Diamonds Are Forever,” Ian Fleming’s fourth James Bond novel, in which 007 is told to bet on a fixed race (horrors!) at Saratoga.

“The Horse Whisperer”:

Both Nicholas Evans’ 1995 novel and Robert Redford’s 1998 film heap on the mushy mysticism along with the romance, which involves an orphic horseman and the tetchy, troubled New Yorkers who seek his help in Montana.

Some visually gorgeous bits were filmed in Saratoga and environs, including a snowy accident scene shot in Hadley that proves central to the plot.

“Saratoga”: Clark Gable plays the hunky bookie, Jean Harlow the platinum dame, in Jack Conway’s 1937 romantic comedy about a stud-farm family and their betting shenanigans.

“Saratoga Trunk”: It wasn’t actually filmed anywhere near Saratoga Springs (unless you count Burbank as a suburb), but this 1945 film version of the Edna Ferber novel stars Gary Cooper as a Texas gamblin’ man who hits the Saratoga racing season with Ingrid Bergman in tow as a sketchy New Orleans dame.

Spawned a 1959 Broadway musical, “Saratoga” (music by Harold Arlen, book by Morton DaCosta, lyrics by Johnny Mercer).

History In “Quinn’s Book” William Kennedy’s 1988 novel, a Civil War reporter reflects on his life, obsessive love and the events along the

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SARATOGA 150

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150 GAME CHANGERS

time winner of the training title. He won 16 races in 1908, a mark that would stand until 1922 when Sam Hildreth trained 20 winners.

way: the war, the draft riots, the Underground Railroad, the boxing.

And the racetrack.

“The Saratoga Deception: A Mystery Novel of the American Revolution,” by Steve Leadley, was published just a few months ago, one of scads of historical novels set in a similar time and place. It’s also one of scads to focus on the Battles of Saratoga, a subgenre that also includes “Saratoga: A Novel of the American Revolution,” by David Garland, and “The Thunder of Captains: A Novel of the Battle of Saratoga,” by former Times Union columnist/editor Dan Lynch.

“Billy Bathgate”: Both E.L. Doctorow’s 1989 novel and Robert Benton’s 1991 film mine the Spa City’s gangland past in a tale of a Bronx kid who sashays around Saratoga with the gun moll (Nicole Kidman) of the legendary Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman). The track makes an appearance. But really, when does it not?

■■■Colin: It’s hard to argue with 15

wins in 15 starts. He was a heavy favorite in all his races from 1907-08.

He won twice at the Spa, taking the Saratoga Special and Grand Union Hotel in 1907.

■■■Regret: In 1915, she became the

first filly to win the Kentucky Derby.

The year before, at Saratoga, she showed signs of things to come when she beat the boys in the Sanford, Saratoga Special and Hopeful. She finished her Hall of Fame career with nine wins in 11 starts.

■■■Roamer: The durable one started

98 times in his career and had 39 wins. Seventeen of those starts came at Saratoga and he won nine times.

Included in his Spa success was the 1914 Travers and the Saratoga Cup three times. In 1918, at the age of seven, he ran the mile in 1:34 4/5 at the Spa he was the first to go that fast.

Mystery Stephen Dobyns’ 10-book detective series, which began in 1976 with “Saratoga Longshot,” stars ex-cop, stable guard and Saratoga gumshoe Charlie Bradshaw.

“Ghost Story,” The 1981 movie, based on the 1979 Peter Straub novel, featured a large and dapper contingent of Golden Boys — Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Melvin Douglas and John Houseman — and their interactions with a spectral femme fatale. Set in New England, but those creepy mansions can be found on North Broadway: Fairbanks’ is 720. Astaire’s is 722, where, more recently, a trio of local filmmakers shot several scenes for a not-yet-released H.P. Lovecraft adaptation called “The Thing on the Doorstep.”

In 2009’s “The Skeptic,” Tim Daly plays an adamantly non-believing lawyer who finds himself in a spooky Victorian manse — actually the Batcheller Mansion Inn — along with Tom Arnold and Zoe Saldana.

“Aftermath”: This neo-noir thriller, the last film of Chris Penn, was filmed in 2005 but hasn’t yet had wide release. Penn plays the ex-con employee who gets into an argument with his construction boss, Anthony Michael Hall, and one thing leads to another. That sort of thing.

Miscellany (and while we’re at it, music):

Matt Witten, best known as a TV producer and scribe — for “Medium” and “House,” among other things — has also written mystery novels set in Saratoga Springs. His first, “Breakfast at Madeline’s,” gets moving when a guy drops dead at a Saratoga java joint (not Uncommon Grounds).

True: It’s not a book or a movie, but no compendium of Saratoga pop-cultural references would be complete without a mention of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” in which the unnamed narcissist scores at the track. It’s the most famous example of “Saratoga” employed as shorthand for snooty-toots wealth and self-absorption.

Speaking of which: In Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the dying Harry barks at his moneyed wife: “If you hadn’t left your own people, your goddamned Old Westbury, Saratoga, Palm Beach people. . . ” “Cremaster 3,” actually the fifth film in visual artist Matthew Barney’s non-linear sexual-anatomical-allegorical film cycle, was shot in part at Saratoga Race Course. It is the only work on this list to feature a half-woman, half-cheetah.

In the ballad “Saratoga,” Nina Simone made this direct appeal

Above: Scenes from ‘Seabiscuit’ were filmed at and featured the Saratoga Race Course. Top: Bing Crosby with Seabiscuit’s owner, Mrs. Charles Howard. Inset: William Kennedy.

to the city: “Oh Saratoga, will you smile / And dream with me a while / My love is far away.” Also, did you know (you probably didn’t) that “Saratoga” is the name of Madrid’s number one metal band? Their songs include “Angel o Demonio” (“Angel or Demon”), but what that has to do with horses, gambling, upstate New York history or sulfuric baths, I can’t say.

Finally, Edith Wharton’s last novel, 1938’s “The Buccaneers,” opens this way. If you can, cue up Duke Ellington’s “Saratoga Swing,” a sultry 1929 jazz tune, and play it while you read: “It was the height of the racing season. The thermometer stood over ninety, and a haze of sunpowdered dust hung in the elms along the street facing the Grand Union Hotel...Mrs. George, whose husband was one of the gentlemen most interested in the racing, sat on the wide hotel verandah, a jug of iced lemonade at her elbow and a palmetto fan in one small hand, and looked out between the immensely tall white columns of the portico, which so often reminded cultured travellers of the Parthenon at Athens.”

And no, the Grand Union Hotel doesn’t exist at 4 Congress Park any longer. A FedEx office does. ▶ abiancolli@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5439 ■ @AmyBiancolli

■■■Sysonby: A short career, but what a career. He won 14 of 15 career starts, including three at the Spa. In the 1905 Great Republic Stakes (which carried a whopping, at the time, $50,000 purse) he had a bad start and had to make up about 75 yards.

Which he did.

■■■The Wait family: Kin to Adiron-

dack Trust President, Charles V. Wait, pictured at right, have lived in Saratoga since 1917.

They largely contributed to the Adirondack Trust bank’s growth and prosperity, with 11 of them being employed by the bank. Four generations of the family also held the position of bank president.

■■■Harry Payne Whitney: A busi-

nessman, thoroughbred horse breeder, and father of C.V. Whitney.

He died in 1930 at age 58. He had many horses in the Kentucky Derby, winning it multiple times.

■■■Calumet Farm: A breeding and

training facility for horses located in Lexington, Kentucky. The farm was founded in 1924 by William Monroe Wright and has raised some of the greatest thoroughbred horses to have ever lived, including three Travers Stakes winners.

■■■Greentree Stable: Established

by Payne Whitney in 1914. In 1926, the Greentree estate was opened on a piece of property in Saratoga Springs. The estate stayed in the Whitney family until it was sold to Robert C. McNair in 1999 for $5.5 million. The Greentree Stable property is adjacent to the backstretch of Saratoga Race Course.

■■■James Rowe Sr.: Before there

was Todd Pletcher, there was James Rowe Sr. He won five Saratoga training titles, the first coming in 1903, the last in 1921. He won the Travers three times and trained a record 34 champion horses. Ten of those horses, including Colin, Regret and Sysonby, are in the Hall of Fame.

Rowe was part of the inaugural class in 1955.

■■■Laverne Fator: He won the

Travers twice (1922, 1927) and took the inaugural running of the Whitney in 1928. A member of the first class in the Hall of Fame (1955), he also won the Saratoga Special twice, the Hopeful, Alabama and the Sanford. Led the Spa in riding wins four times in the 1920s.

■■■Discovery: He won the Whitney three straight years starting in 1934, the only horse to ever pull that off.

The next year he was named Horse of the Year. For his career, he had 63 Please see CHANGERS 16 ▶

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▼ CoNTINUeD FRom 15

starts, 27 wins, 10 seconds and 10 thirds.

■■■Man o’ War: Some think he was the greatest ever. Started 21 times and won 20. The only loss for the 1920 Preakness, Belmont and Travers winner (he skipped the Kentucky Derby) came in the 1919 Sanford at the Spa. He lost to a horse named, appropriately, Upset.

■■■Exterminator: Ninety-nine times this gelding went to the races and he was a winner in 50 of them.

Fourteen of those starts came at Saratoga. As a 3-year-old, he finished fourth in the 1918 Travers and was 0-3 that summer. He regrouped and won the Saratoga Cup the next four years.

■■■Eight Thirty: In the summer of

Times Union archive photos

1939, the colt burst onto the Saratoga scene, winning four stakes races in a month, including the Travers and Whitney. He would win 16 races in his 27 starts.

Above, Greg Montgomery, retired Times Union design editor, with some of his Travers posters. Top right: The popular lawn jockey — not high art, but art nonetheless. Right, “Walking Ring, Greentree Stable, Saratoga,” oil on panel by Vaughn Flannery (American, 1898 - 1955). Image courtesy Red Fox Fine Art, Middleburg, Va. Below: An 1874 Currier and Ives print showing downtown Saratoga Springs.

■■■Gallant Fox: The second horse to

win the Triple Crown (1930), the bay colt with the white blaze was shocked in the Travers by 100-1 long shot Jim Dandy, who went on to have a Spa race named for him. Fourteen days after the colossal upset, Gallant Fox won the Saratoga Cup.

■■■Granville: In 1935, he started

twice at the Spa and finished second and third. the following year, he dropped his rider in the Kentucky Derby. At Saratoga, he woke up as he won the Kenner, Travers and Saratoga Cup. In the Cup, he defeated top handicap horse Discovery, who won three straight Whitney Handicaps.

Was named the first Horse of the Year, by Daily Racing Form, in 1936.

The track as art Artists capture the beauty of horses against Saratoga backdrop

By Amy Biancolli

W

hen it comes to sitting for portraits, few subjects are less still or more beautiful than the horse. Equine art goes back 16,000 years, all the way to the cave walls of Lascaux, reflecting our enduring human fascination with the grace and muscularity of horses in motion.

The Saratoga Race Course has only been around for 150 of those years — but from the beginning, painters and sculptors have immortalized the track and its hooved competitors. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame hosts a permanent exhibit highlighting some of the racecourse’s earliest renderings — by Skeaping, Troye, Flannery, et al — but it remains a powerful draw for modern painters, sculptors and photographers as well.

Saratoga is full of galleries displaying the work of such contemporary artists as Dave Oxford, Terry Lindsey and Celeste Susany, to name just a few. So long as there are horses, there’ll be artists to capture them in the perfect summer light.

Given the track’s historic and enduring popularity, a complete rundown of everything out there would be logistically impossible. That said, below is a sampling of some of the artists who have documented the race course since it first opened in 1863. “Horses make a landscape look beautiful,” the poet Alice Walker once observed, even — or perhaps

especially — if that landscape is a dusty loop rimmed with crowds and pageantry.

Vaughan Flannery, a Kentuckian born in 1898, painted thoroughbreds in informal, everyday settings.

His oil-on-panel “Walking Ring, Greentree Stable, Saratoga” has a lazy, late-summer feel to it, showing horses on their circuit around the ring. Many of his works depict Greentree.

“The History and Art of 25 Travers,” a 2008 book by Vic Zast, features the art and posters of equine artist Greg Montgomery, whose crisp, colorful posters have officially heralded the Travers Stakes going back to 1986. (Montgomery is a retired design editor for the Times Union.)

John Skeaping, a 20th-century English painter and sculptor, produced the famous bronze sculpture of Secretariat on display at the Racing Museum. As a sculptor, he was drawn to animals other than equus (fish and gazelle included), but he’s best known for his fluid and dynamic portraits of racehorses in motion.

Polo art is one subspecialty among artists who focus on horse racing. Among them is watercolorist Ron Skidmore of Greenville, who played the sport in his youth.

Edward Troye was born in Switzerland in 1808 and lived and painted primarily in Kentucky, but his portraits of thoroughbreds celebrated horses that distinguished themselves in Saratoga: Longfellow,

for instance, who won the Saratoga Cup in 1871 but lost in 1972 to Henry Bassett.

Their rivalry was captured in a Currier and Ives print from 1974 that shows the pair of them, eight hooves off the ground, Longfellow one length behind. The 19thcentury printmaking firm produced other prints with Saratoga themes, including a few bustling depictions of downtown.

“Barbara Livingston’s Saratoga,” a 2005 book by the longtime equine photographer, features luminous pictures of the racetrack and other Spa City locales — Yaddo, parks, architecture.

Finally, lawn jockeys: They’re not high art, but no article on art and the track would be complete without a nod to those little painted figures, some of them cast iron, some of them concrete, who stand sentry on well-appointed lawns during racing season. Legend has it that they (and their perpetually raised arms) are an homage to a young man who froze to death on the banks of the Delaware River, lantern in hand, while watching George Washington’s horses. The General then immortalized him with a statue at Mount Vernon.

It makes a good story. But sometimes — as with so many tales of jockeys, horses, racing and Saratoga — that’s more than enough. ▶ abiancolli@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5439 ■ @AmyBiancolli

■■■Seabiscuit: The Biscuit was a national treasure during the late 1930s.

While the nation was going through the Great Depression, Seabiscuit gave the sagging country something to smile about.

He rose from a nobody horse to win 21 of his final 33 starts, including the match race with Triple Crown winner in 1938 at Pimlico. Before he was a star, though, he was at Saratoga. He lost twice in 1935, but did win twice in 1936, a claiming race and a handicap.

■■■Twenty Grand: In 1931, he won

the Kentucky Derby and Belmont, but a rough trip in the Preakness may have cost him the Triple Crown.

He showed up at Saratoga and won the Travers and Saratoga Cup. Was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1957.

■■■War Admiral: The fourth Triple Crown winner, The Admiral might be best known for losing the match race to Seabiscuit at Pimlico in 1938. He won 21 of 26 career starts, including the Whitney and Saratoga Handicap at the Spa. ■■■Equipoise: He started 51 times

in his career and won 29 times. At Saratoga, he won the Wilson and the Whitney in 1932 as a 4-year-old and then won the Wilson in 1933 as well as the Saratoga Cup.

■■■Hirsch Jacobs: He led the nation

11 times in most wins by a trainer, and he won the Saratoga meet four times: 1937, 1946, 1956 and 1958. His biggest Saratoga win came in the 1946 Whitney with another future Hall of Famer, Stymie.

■■■Mary Hirsch: The daughter of

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Hall of Famer Max Hirsch, she was the first female to to be granted a training license by the Jockey Club (1935). She was the first female trainer to get a Saratoga stakes win (1936 Diana with No Sir) and she is still the only female to train a Travers winner (Thanksgiving, 1938). That horse was owned by the aunt of future Albany mayor Erastus Corning.

■■■Elliott Burch: He is the only

trainer to have four Travers wins and they came in 1959 (Sword Dancer), Quadrangle (1964), Arts and Letters (1969) and Key to the Mint (1972). His horses also found the winner’s circle in the Whitney four times.

Courtesy of Saratoga Springs Historical Museum, George S. Bolster collection

In a sport of kings, fine fashions have always been part of the program.

Simply fashionable No matter the decade, smart track attire is always in style

By Kristi Barlette

F

or many trackgoers, horseshoes and jockey dressings don’t matter as much the Christian Louboutins and the LBDs (little black dresses) revelers, spectators and bettors are sporting.

The tradition of fashion is at the forefront during racing season for many heading to Saratoga each summer.

“It has certainly been the case since the inception of thoroughbred racing and women attending the races,” says Joanne Adams, NYRA’s community relations director. “There has long been this great pageantry in this sport.”

The latter is due, in part, because horse racing started as a sport of kings and horse owners were exceedingly wealthy. Fine fashions were — and still are, in many cases — associated with wealth.

This fashion fascination at the track dates back to the early 1900s when people got dressed up whenever they went out. The dedication to smart dressing surged in the 1940s, a time when women wore hats to church and skirts or dresses on airplanes and, well, suits and freshly polished shoes or dresses (with stockings, no bare legs back then) to the track.

“It didn’t matter how much money they had, they just always took great pride in what they wore,” says Adams.

■■■John Gaver, Sr.: This Hall of Famer has plenty of success at Saratoga, winning the Grand Union Hotel Stakes three times and the Hopeful twice. The Whitney, however, was his race, as he won it a record five times. Two of the wins came with champion horses Devil Diver (1944) and Tom Fool (1953).

He won three Spa training titles, including back-to-back championships in 1941-42.

■■■Sylvester Veitch: This Hall of Famer won three straight Saratoga training titles from 1953 to 55 and had a career high 19 wins during the 1954 meet, the most since 1936 when Sam Hildreth had 20 winners. In 1953, Veitch had 18 winners.

■■■Oscar White: He had a good run

in Spa stakes races in the 1940s and 1950s. He won the Travers three times (Natchez, 1946, One Count, the 1952 Horse of the Year, and Piano Jim in 1958). He also won the Whitney in 1945, the Alabama in 1951, the Hopeful in 1944 and the Saratoga Special in 1942 and 1944.

■■■Eddie Arcaro: One of four ridCourtesy of Saratoga Springs Historical Museum, George S. Bolster collection

During a time when women wore hats to church and skirts or dresses on airplanes, the same went for the track (with stockings, no bare legs back then).

Hats and high heels continued through the 1970s and 1980s. Women wore large-brimmed hats with lace and flowers, says Nancy Matt, owner of Le Beau Chapeau Millinery in Loudonville. They channeled the Victorian area, investing time — and funds — into their track-day attire.

The decline, if that’s what you want to call it, didn’t start till the 1990s, says Matt. While the men’s look remained constant — a suit or jacket and pants — women’s fashions evolved. Flat shoes (or kitten heels) and capri pants became common.

Hats got smaller, and the brims more clipped. Opulence was shown through being decked in jewels, or by toting a designer handbag.

And now we have the modern-day apparel. A look that’s been inspired, in part, by the royals, says Matt. Women fancy facinators, headbands and brimless hats. They embrace bling — on their headpieces and their clothing — but their overall look is simple, from tip to toe.

“These days, it really is about a more relaxed headwear to go with the relaxed clothing style,” Matt says. ▶ kbarlette@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5494 ■ @JustKristi ■ http:// facebook.com/JustKristiOnline

ers to win the Travers Stakes four times (1938, 1942, 1944, 1951). Also won the Saratoga Special seven times, the Alabama three times and the Whitney twice.

He was the leading jockey four times, the first in 1937, the last in 1950. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1958.

■■■Ted Atkinson: This Hall of Famer is a two-time winner of the Travers (1946, 1948) and also won the Sanford four times, Alabama three times and the Whitney, Spinaway and Test two times each. He was the leading Spa rider four times, including three straight years (1947-49).

■■■Eric Guerin: This Hall of Famer rode the great Native Dancer to victory in the 1953 Travers, giving him back-to-back wins in the race. He would also win it in 1963. He won the Alabama three times (back-to-back in 1946-47) and is the only rider to ever win the Hopeful three straight years (1950-52).

■■■Hedley Woodhouse: One of the dominant riders in the 1950s, he won four riding titles at the Spa during the decade. The Hall of Famer also won the Travers twice (1954 and 1956). He was the top rider at the Spa from 1953 to 55.

■■■Gallorette: During her Hall of Fame career, Gallorette didn’t mind beating up on the boys. From 1946-48, she had three wins at the Spa. She won the Whitney Handicap in 1948, a year after losing the race by a neck. She also won the Wilson twice, and would have had three except for a loss by a nose in 1946.

■■■Nashua: He was favored in all

Photos courtesy Nancy Matt

Models show off a decade worth of hats made by Nancy Matt, owner of Le Beau Chapeau Millinery in Loudonville, N.Y.

three legs of the 1956 Triple Crown, but was second to Swaps in the Derby before winning the Preakness Please see CHANGERS 20 ▶

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

Looking ahead Charles Wait, Saratoga 150 Committee chairman, looks at changes made and yet to be made

By Leigh Hornbeck

C

harles Wait, the president, CEO and chairman of the board of Adirondack Trust Co., is also chairman of the Saratoga 150 Committee. Wait, 62, grew up in Saratoga at a time when the city was down on its luck. His father, former bank chairman Newman “Pete” Wait, was among the concerned citizens who brought about a new era for the Spa City, one the younger Wait has continued to foster since he began his career at the bank in 1974. Wait told a reporter about his feelings for Saratoga Springs and what the 150th anniversary means to the community. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did the Saratoga 150 committee come together?

A: For the 100th anniversary in 1963,

NYRA took the lead. My father was the treasurer of the group. Two years ago NYRA was going through a rough patch and it was clear the community was going to have to take the lead. It was also an opportunity to take the bright side of racing when we spend a lot of time talking about the problems. I knew it would take money, so I pledged the bank’s support and then called Bill Dake at Stewart’s; Phil Glotzbach, the president of Skidmore; and Charlie Hayward, then president of NYRA. I asked each group to put up $25,000 initially and pledge $75,000 later for a total of $100,000. No one hesitated for a moment. It turned out because of the sale of memorabilia and other founding members stepping up, we didn’t have to go back to the original founders for the rest of the money.

Please see WAIT 22 ▶

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NEW YORK’S EQUINE INDUSTRY Making a Difference in Every County in the State

33,000 Full-Time Jobs

1.3 MILLION Acres of Green Space

$187 MILLION in State and Local Taxes

$4.2 BILLION in Economic Impact That’s What We Call

HORSE POWER! From the 2012 NYS Equine Industry Economic Impact Study.

Skip Dickstein/Times Union

CHARLES WAIT

NEW YORK’S THOROUGHBRED RACING INDUSTRY Taking Care of Our Equines

TAKE THE LEAD partners with established aftercare programs to provide new homes for the Thoroughbreds retiring from competition on the New York Racing Association circuit.

TAKE2 promotes second careers for retired Thoroughbred racehorses with awards and prize money at hunter/jumper horse shows.

For more information, go to www.take2tbreds.com.

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by a length and the Belmont by nine. As a 2-year-old, he won the Grand Union Hotel Stakes and the Hopeful at the Spa. For his career, he had 22 wins in 30 starts.

■■■Native Dancer: The best horse to enter and not win the Kentucky Derby, he won 21 of 22 career starts, the only loss coming by a head in the Run for the Roses.

He rebounded to win the Belmont and Preakness, then took the 1953 Travers by 51/2 lengths. The Gray Ghost was 6-for-6 at the Spa; his final win by nine lengths in a handicap race on Aug. 16, 1954.

■■■Sword Dancer: He was beaten by

Associated Press

Whirlaway is draped with the floral tribute in the winner’s circle at Belmont Park, N.Y., on June 7, 1941, after winning the Belmont Stakes race of the Triple Crown with jockey Eddie Arcaro. Trainer Ben Jones holds the bridle.

In the Travers, greatness is at stake Winners of storied race provide a glimpse of thoroughbred history

By Tim Wilkin

T

he great Man o’War won the Travers.

So did Whirlaway, the only Triple Crown winner to ever find the winner’s circle in the Midsummer Derby.

If you look up and down the list of winners of Saratoga’s great race, you find yourself galloping through the pages of thoroughbred history.

Native Dancer, Sword Dancer, Damascus, Arts and Letters. Alydar, Easy Goer and Holy Bull are just a few of the magical thoroughbred names that commanded respect on their day in the late summer sun at Saratoga.

“The Travers is a great race, run at a great track and has so much tradition,” said Hall of Fame trainer Leroy Jolley, who won the race twice, with Honest Pleasure in 1976 and General Assembly in 1979.

General Assembly ran the 1 1/4 miles in a time of 2:00. That is still the fastest time any horse ever ran the Travers in and is still the track record. The colt won the race by 15 lengths, the secondlargest margin of victory in the history of the race. Only Damascus, who won it by 22 lengths in 1967, had an easier time.

The race was run on Aug. 18, 1979, on a sloppy track on a miserable day. For Jolley, it might have been one of the nicest days ever.

“But it was a horrible weather day,” Jolley said by cellphone. “It rained all night and it just kept on raining (race day). It would just keep coming down in heavy downpours.”

Jolley never considered scratching the General, who was a son of the great Secretariat. General Assembly had done OK on off-tracks before, but he had always thrived at the Spa. He won the first three times he ran there, and Jolley was confident he would run well in the Travers, no matter the condition of the track.

The 5-2 favorite in the field of seven was the filly Davona Dale. General Assembly went off at 3-1 and was never seriously challenged. When he sloshed across the finish line in the record time, he wiped out the old mark of 2:01 1/5, which was set three years earlier by Honest Pleasure, also trained by Jolley. “(General Assembly) loved that race track,” Jolley said. “Maybe some of the other horses didn’t like the (sloppy) track that day but that is something you don’t know. All I know is that he liked it and he was a very good horse.”

Photos by Skip Dickstein/Times Union

Trainer Leroy Jolley works with one of his charges at the Stakes Barn at the track. In 2012, workers place the dead heat Travers winner canoes in the lake at the track.

a nose in the 1959 Kentucky Derby and then had to settle for second in the Preakness. Sword Dancer got some revenge by winning the Belmont and then went to Saratoga, where he won the Travers Stakes.

He has a race named after him at the Spa, which is on the grass. Odd, because he never ran on the grass.

■■■Tom Fool: The 1953 Horse of the

Year had plenty of success at Saratoga, winning six of the eight starts he made. Included were wins in the 1953 Wilson and Whitney Stakes. He was third in the 1952 Travers. For his career, he had 21 wins in 30 starts.

■■■Whirlaway: The fifth horse to win the Triple Crown (1941), he is the only one from the select group to also win the Travers. The Calumet Farm runner won 32 of 60 career starts, including the 1940 Hopeful and Saratoga Special.

■■■Joe Dalton: He was honored as a

Times Union archive

The Man o’ War trophy given to the Travers Stakes winner.

Jolley was not so fortunate in 1962 when he was part of what may have been the best Travers ever run. Two horses, one named Jaipur, the other Ridan, engaged each other from the moment the gates opened.

They ran together all the way, never separated by more than a head. At the end, Jaipur’s nose got down in front of Ridan.

“When they were going down the backside, I thought one of them was going to have to get worn out,” Jolley said.

“Neither of them gave it up all the way to the wire. But, to tell you the truth, I thought Jaipur got his head down first.

Yes, to me, I thought my horse was beat.

It was one of the greatest Travers ... it was one of the greatest races.”

That’s the sentiment you get from any trainer or jockey who wins the Travers Stakes. For some, it can be a career maker. For others, it can reinforce what a great career it has been.

Pat Day won the Travers four times, one of four jockeys to pull that off. He won aboard Play Fellow in 1983, Java Gold in 1987, Easy Goer in 1989 and Ten Most Wanted n 2003.

“All of them were extra special,” Day said by cellphone. “I will be the first to tell you I was incredibly blessed ... to be part of a select group that won that race four times ... well, I just have a hard time putting that into words.” ▶ twilkin@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545415 ■ @tjwilkin

life member by the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce after contributing to the city for more than four decades. Dalton took over the chamber in 1970 with one full-time and one part-time employee and a total of only 330 members.

By his retirement in 2010, the chamber had 10 full-time staffers and 2,700 members. Even in retirement, he’s the director of the Saratoga 150 Celebration, as well as the chairman of the board of directors of the Saratoga Springs City Center.

■■■W. Averell Harriman: New York

State governor in the early 1960s, he started the “Harriman law.” This mandated Saratoga Race Course race a minimum of 24 days every year, which has held ever since to make the racetrack what it is today.

■■■Raymond Watkins: A former Broadway business owner who went on to become mayor of Saratoga from 1974-80. He’s known for protecting and developing businesses on Broadway, and protecting the city’s heritage.

■■■John Roohan: Founded his realty

company in 1969 in the community of Saratoga. Now located on Broadway, the company has grown exponentially over the years, expanding to more than 50 real estate associates.

■■■Clarence Dart: World War II fighter pilot and member of the Tuskegee airmen. He won various awards over the years, and one from George W. Bush. He died in February 2012 at the age of 91. He was emeritus on The Salvation Army Saratoga Springs Advisory Board in which he has served since Nov. 11, 1963.

■■■Bertram and Diana Firestone:

Brother and sister duo who special

Please see CHANGERS 22 ▶

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ADDITIONAL COPIES OF THIS SPECIAL COMMEMORATIVE SECTION

ARE AVAILABLE FROM TIMES UNION REPRESENTATIVES AT THE RACE TRACK.

or go to timesunion.com/saratoga150 to order your copy

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ize in owning and breeding thoroughbred racehorses. One of their most prized horses was General Assembly who went on to receive the most important victory of his career in 1979 in the Travers Stakes.

That day, General Assembly set a new Saratoga record that still stands today.

■■■Laz Barrera: Known best for

being the trainer of Affirmed, the last Triple Crown winner (1978). He enjoyed success at Saratoga in the mid-1970s, winning the training title in 1975, 1976 and 1979. He shared the award with Tommie Kelly in 1977.

Where business f lows like a spring

Times Union archive photos

Service industries catering to rich gave Saratoga its start

By Leigh Hornbeck

T

he commercial success story of Saratoga Springs is one of a heyday that was, then wasn’t, and is now here again.

Tourists found the Spa City before horse racing did, drawn here by the health benefits of the only naturally carbonated mineral springs east of the Rocky Mountains. City founder Gideon Putnam built the first hotel in 1802, a three-story tavern across the road from Congress Spring. Over time, the simple tavern became the huge, ornate Grand Union Hotel. It had more than 1,000 rooms and occupied a block on Broadway between Congress and Washington streets. The United States Hotel next to it at the corner of

Please see BUSINESS 28 ▶

■■■John Sellers: Not many riders were as hot as he was in the early 1960s. He won 35 races to win the 1962 Spa riding title, then the second most winners for a 24-day meet. In his three Travers mounts in the decade, he was third, second and won it all in 1965 with Hail to All. The Hall of Famer also won the 1962 Alabama, Whitney (with his 1961 Derby winner Carry Back), Saratoga Special, Test, and the 1963 Spinaway.

■■■Bill Shoemaker: Although the

majority of his 8,833 career wins came in California, “The Shoe” did come East and rode in the Travers five times, winning three of them. One of them came in 1962 when he rode Jaipur to perhaps the most exciting Travers win ever. He also won the Alabama three times, back-to-back in 1966-67.

■■■Braulio Baeza: One of the four

At top, A postcard of hand-painted photograph of the Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga Springs in 1870. Above, The Hall of Springs in 1935. Below, The historic Adelphi Hotel still stands in Saratoga but is closed this year for renovations.

jockeys to win the Travers Stakes four times. He did it in 1966, 1969, 1972 and 1975. Hall of Famer also aboard horses that won 22 other major Spa stakes, including the Hopeful five times and the Saratoga Special and Schuylerville four times each.

■■■Bert Mulholland: Is the only

trainer in history to train five Travers winners. The most famous of his winners was Jaipur, who outdueled Ridan in 1962. His other Midsummer Derby champs were Eight Thirty (1939), Lights Up (1950), Battlefield (1951) and Crewman (1963). Was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1967, the final year he trained. Was the Spa’s leading trainer in 1939, 1940 and 1950.

WAIT

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Q: An event like the 150th anniversary of Saratoga Race Course draws national and international attention to Saratoga. How will you keep the momentum going to draw tourists and business to the area?

A: We’ll talk more about that after the meet, and the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Business Association will have a lot of input on what did and didn’t work, but there are already things I think are great — the public viewing stand, reopening the Oklahoma side will be an enduring thing. Something like the Floral Fete might be a one-time thing because it’s hard to pull together.

Q: When you’re traveling and meet someone who doesn’t know Saratoga, how do you describe it?

A: It’s the town where everybody wished they grew up. “The city in the country” is nice, too, and John Hendrickson calls it the soul of racing, where it’s more about the sport than the gambling. I like that, but for me it’s the town where everybody wishes they could grow up. It’s small enough so the teachers know their students

and if you’ve been here a little while you know the fire chief and the police chief and the beat cops, you can walk to work and not worry about it — but we’re big enough to have one of the country’s best liberal arts colleges and the longest-standing sports venue at the Saratoga Race Course.

Q: What was the most exciting race you watched in person?

A: In 2004, Marylou Whitney’s horse, Birdstone, won the Travers Stakes. You could see the dark clouds rolling in and the lightning flashing, the horses ran, the Whitney horse came in first and then the rain came down. It was one of the few times they had to turn on the lights because it was so dark. They canceled racing after that.

Q: Describe an ideal day for you in Saratoga during the meet.

A: I love walking around the backstretch after an early morning breakfast and watching the horses training.

I like snacking at the Taste of Saratoga booths. Lunch at the Reading Room is special, too, if you have access to it. The National Museum of Racing is a neat place to go. I would need two or three days to log in everything I like.

Q: Do you drink from the mineral springs around town? Do you prefer

one spring over another?

A: After a run, there’s nothing like a drink from the State Seal spring at Saratoga Spa State Park. I’ve tried taking it home in a container, but it loses something.

Q: There are changes on the horizon for the design and look of the race course property. What changes or renovations would you like to see?

A: First we need to finish renovations for horses and people — people first.

We’ve done two dorms and they all need to be done. The barns all need continuing work. It’s a challenge to maintain the historical aspects. Next the corporate tents need to come down. They’re popular and people like them but they’re ugly. I think we can do something that resembles the Clubhouse where the At the Rail pavilion is now.

I also want the area where the garbage trucks and TV truck park cleaned up.

We should move the service entrance to the south side, off Nelson Avenue. Next, we should change the track manager’s house (across Union Avenue from the track) to a corporate retreat. There’s a real opportunity there. ▶ lhornbeck@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5352 ■ @leighhornbeck

■■■Allen Jerkens: The Chief is known for taking down the great Secretariat in the 1973 Whitney with Onion, but that’s not all. He won the Saratoga training title in 1971-73 and shared the award in 1978 with Woody Stephens and Sid Watters Jr. Was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1975 at the age of 45, the youngest trainer to be inducted. Won the Alabama, Test and Ballerina three times each.

■■■Jonathan Sheppard: This Hall

of Famer is one of the few trainers to excel with flat runners as well as steeplechase horses. He has won the New York Turf Writers’ Cup 12 times and, on the flat, has three Diana victories and two Sword Dancers at the Spa. He ranks fourth, since 1976, with 187 Saratoga wins. Has won at least one race every season at the Spa for the last 44 years.

■■■Eddie Maple: This Hall of Famer won the Spa riding title in 1975 and was credited with 255 wins after 1976.

He won back-to-back Travers in 198081 and was second twice. He also won the Saratoga Special five times.

■■■Ron Turcotte: Doesn’t make this

list just because he was the rider of Secretariat. He won the riding title in 1973 — the same year Big Red won Please see CHANGERS 26 ▶

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from

George and Christine Hearst and the Times Union Family

A Hearst Newspaper | Founded 1856

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A Special Message From Billy Fuccillo

Dear Capital District, As a member of the Capital District community, I’m pleased to salute the Saratoga Race Course on celebrating 150 years. To all of the owners, trainers, breeders and people who support the oldest race course in the country, we’d like to offer you a HUGE congratulations.

Just as the Saratoga Race Course is a part of the history and future of the Capital District, the entire Fuccillo team is committed to remaining a HUGE part of the local community. You can count on us to be here to provide HUGE savings, selection, service and financing options to the people of this region for many years to come.

Once again, congratulations on the continuation of something HUGE here in the Capital District. We look forward to continuing the traditions of the Saratoga Race Course for many years to come!

Sincerely,

FUCCILLO

OF SCHENECTADY

FUCCILLO

OF SCHENECTADY

4101 STATE STREET • SCHENECTADY, NY • 518-382-0274 • billYCARS.Com

3900 STATE STREET • SCHENECTADY, NY • 518-847-0800 • fuCCillokiASCHENECTADY.Com

FUCCILLO

of EAST gREENbuSH

634 ColumbiA TpkE • EAST gREENbuSH, NY • 518-479-1000 • HugECARS.Com

Skip Dickstein/Times Union

Rachel Alexandra with jockey Calvin Borel, right, edges Macho Again with jockey Robby Albarado to win the 56th running of the Woodward in 2009.

Win, place . . . and alWays a shoW

T

These 25 races show why a day at Saratoga is never predictable

By Tim Wilkin

housands of races have been run at Saratoga Race Course over the past 150 years. How do you pick just 25? The Times Union’s turf writer Tim Wilkin gives it a try.

Aug. 4, 1973: The horse that just could not lose, lost. The mighty Secretariat, the first Triple Crown winner since 1948, was supposed to roll past the other four runners in the Whitney Handicap. Sent off at odds of 1-10, Secretariat could not catch the 5-1 Onion, who led every step of the way to post one of the biggest upsets in Saratoga history.

Aug. 18, 1979: The weather was horrible, and the track was a sea of slop. But that didn’t seem to bother General Assembly, who romped to win the Travers Stakes over second-place finisher Romp. How much of a romp? Ridden by Jacinto Vasquez, the General won by 15 lengths, the second-highest margin in race history. Oh, and he ran the fastest time (2:00), a mark that still stands today.

Aug. 25, 2012: And, at the wire for the 143rd running of the Travers, the winner is ... Alpha. And Golden Ticket.

The Midsummer Derby ended in a dead heat as 2-1 Alpha, the favorite, and 33-1 Golden Ticket could not be separated by a photo. It was the first dead heat in race history, and that’s why you’ll see two canoes in the infield this summer.

Oh, Fast Falcon, who closed like a freight train to get third, only was beaten by a neck.

Aug. 1, 1985: The Test Stakes was going to be the next start for the best 3-year-old filly in the land, Mom’s Command. She just had completed a sweep of the New York Filly Triple Crown by winning the Acorn, Mother Goose and Coaching Club American Oaks at Belmont Park. The seven-furlong race at the Spa was not supposed to be a test at all. Well, someone forgot to tell Lady’s Secret. The D. Wayne Lukas-trained filly, who would go off the favorite in 25 of her final 26 starts, was a bargain on this day.

She was 10-1. At the end, though, Lady’s Secret was two

Please see SHOW 31 ▶

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the Triple Crown and also lost the Whitney at the Spa. He won the Travers once (Annihilate ‘Em in 1973) and the Diana three times as well as the 1972 Sanford and Hopeful with Secretariat.

■■■Jorge Velasquez: Was the top

rider at Saratoga in 1969, 1972 and 1974, and won 236 races at the Spa after 1976. The Hall of Famer won the Travers once (Alydar in 1978) and was second twice and third four times in 13 mounts.

■■■Affirmed: The 11th — and last

— horse to win the Triple Crown (1978). As a 2-year-old, the colt won the Sanford and Hopeful at the Spa and then took the ’78 Jim Dandy, his ninth straight win. Then came the loss via DQ in the Travers to archtrival Alydar.

■■■Alydar: The other half of the

greatest rivalry in racing history.

He finished second to Affirmed in all three legs of the 1978 Triple Crown. He beat older horses in the ’78 Whitney and then turned the tables on Affirmed, winning the Travers via his rival’s disqualification.

All About the SpA

150 facts that you may or may not know

By Tim Wilkin

1. Racing was called off twice due to the death of U.S. Presidents: Ulysses Grant died in Saratoga County on Aug. 4, 1885, and Warren Harding passed on Aug. 10, 1923.

2. The first horse to win a race at Saratoga was a trotter named Lady Suffolk, in 1848. She was honored forever as the subject of the song, “The Old Gray Mare.” You know it ... “The Old Gray Mare ... she ain’t what she used to be.”

3. There WAS parimutuel betting the first six or seven years of Saratoga. But you had to go off campus to do it — at the Canfield Casino, which is in Congress Park.

4. Barn 43 on the Oklahoma Training Track was once the home of the mighty Man o’War. Now, it’s used as a storage shed.

5. There were about 3,000 people

who came out for the first day of racing at the Spa, on Aug. 3rd, 1863.

6. Between 1869 and 1893,

18 days of racing were called off because of weather, most because of rain.

■■■Kelso: In a career that spanned from 1959-66, the handicap hero won 39 of 63 races and carried 130 or more pounds 24 times (he won 13). Kelso won the Whitney Handicap three times (1961, 63 and 65), one of just two horses (Discovery was the other) to do that.

■■■Ruffian: The best of her

generation. She won her first 10 starts by an average of over eight lengths. She won the 1974 Spinaway at the Spa by 12 3/4 lengths.

Of course, her career — and life — ended with the ill-fated match race against 1975 Derby winner Foolish Pleasure.

■■■Secretariat: The 1973 Triple Crown winner won the Spa’s Sanford and Hopeful as a 2-year-old.

Lost the ’73 Whitney to Onion, one of the most stunning upsets in Saratoga history. Big Red won 16 of 21 career starts.

■■■Shuvee: This Hall of Famer

was the second filly to win the Filly Triple Crown when she took the Acorn, Mother Goose and Coaching Club American Oaks in New York in 1969. She broke her maiden at Saratoga in 1968 on her seventh try.

■■■Damascus: The 1967 Preakness and Belmont winner only ran once at Saratoga, but he makes this list because of the performance he turned in in the Travers. It came on a sloppy track and against just three opponents,

Please see CHANGERS 27 ▶

lowed inside the track unless they were accompanied by a man.

female to win the Saratoga training title.

11. Empire Maker, who denied Funny Cide the 2003 Triple Crown by beating him in the Belmont Stakes, would make just one more start: a second in the Spa’s Jim Dandy that summer.

23. Jockey Angel Cordero is the King of Saratoga as he won the riding title 14 times, including 11 straight years (1976-86).

10. A day of racing was canceled because of weather in 2006 and 2011.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

7. While governor of New York state, future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was at the 1930 Travers. He saw a horse named Jim Dandy upset Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox. 8. Todd Pletcher, a nine-time Saratoga training champion, is the active leader in training wins with 360. Bill Mott, who also has nine titles, is second with 331.

9. In 1865, no women were al-

22. The cost of admission to the first day of racing at Saratoga — Aug. 3, 1863 — was $1.

12. The Albany Handicap, for New York breds, has been run since 1978. The first seven editions of the race were run at Aqueduct or Belmont.

13. The Spinaway, the Spa’s final stakes race for 2-year-old fillies, is named for a filly of the same name who ran in the 1870s. She won seven of nine starts, none at Saratoga.

14. In the early 1900s, the Spa ran a race called the Hopeless, for 5-year-old maidens.

15. In 1960 and 1961, the Whitney was run at Belmont Park, because it was deemed there were too many distance races at Saratoga.

16. Parimutuel wagering began at Saratoga in 1940.

17. On Aug. 2, 2006, extreme heat caused NYRA to cancel the entire card.

■■■Arts and Letters: The 1969

Horse of the Year was second in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but then won the Belmont.

That was the start of a six-race winning streak that stopped in Saratoga where he dominated the Jim Dandy (winning by 10 lengths) and the Travers (winning by 6 1/2 lengths).

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

18. The Diana Handicap, for fillies and mares, is named for the Roman mythological goddess of the hunt, who had the power to talk to and control animals.

19. From 1993-2001, Hall of Fame jockeys Jerry Bailey and Mike Smith won the Alabama Stakes four times each.

20. Point Given made history in 2001 after winning the Travers.

He became the first horse in history to win four $1 million races in a row: Preakness, Belmont, Haskell and Travers.

21. In 2009, Linda Rice made

history when she became the first

JOCKEY ANGEL CORDERO

24. Since 1993, the largest payout on a $2 bet came on Aug. 23, 2008 — Travers Day — when Slambino lit up the board with a $179 payout.

25. No, the Alabama Stakes did not get its name because it used to be run in Alabama. William Cottrill, an owner and breeder from Mobile, Ala., was too modest to have a race named after him. When he was approached in the early 1870s, he said to name it after his state. So it was done.

26. In 1863 and 1864, the race meet lasted four days. In 1865, it was increased to six.

27. The last Kentucky Derby winner to run in the Travers was Super Saver, who finished 10th in the 2010 Midsummer Derby.

28. The first Spa meet, in 1863, opened one month after the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg.

29. Before every race, a bell in the winner’s circle is hand rung, a signal that there are 17 minutes to the post time of the next race.

It used to be a head’s up for the jockeys.

30. The great Man o’War was sold to owner Sam Riddle at Saratoga for the grand total of $5,000.

Track endures for a mighty long run Despite wars, floods, heat, crusades, recessions, Saratoga has lost only six meets and four days of racing since 1863

By Paul Grondahl

S

aratoga Race Course opened on Aug. 3, 1863, one month after Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, amid the most divisive conflict in American history.

The first challenge was attracting enough race-worthy thoroughbred horse flesh for the inaugural race, since quality equines were being pressed into wartime service.

Rations of horse meat occasionally fed desperate and starving soldiers and civilians during the long years of fighting.

Still, the deep-pocketed and politically connected Northern organizers managed to stable 27 horses for Saratoga’s inaugural season in 1863, a four-day meet.

Despite the deprivations of the Civil War, Saratoga broke fast from the starting gate and staked its claim

as a racetrack that could overcome conflicts and crises in order to pursue a passion for racing and wagering among thoroughbred aficionados.

The track on Union Avenue has closed for just six summers over the course of its 150-year history.

The season-long shutdowns had a variety of causes: pressure from antigambling crusaders, internal politics, gas rationing and travel restrictions mandated during World War II. There were also four single-day cancellations of racing, twice due to weather and twice to commemorate the deaths of Presidents Ulysses S. Grant in nearby Wilton on July 23, 1885, and Warren G. Harding on Aug. 2, 1923, in San Francisco.

In recent years, oppressive heat and humidity that threatened the health of the thoroughbreds and the safety of the jockeys caused the track to close on Aug. 2, 2006. Heavy rain and flooding from Hurricane Irene forced the

track to shut down for a day on Aug. 28, 2011.

“It’s a pretty remarkable run to lose only six meets and four days of racing since 1863,” said Allan Carter, historian at the National Museum of Racing and co-author with Mike Kane of a new book, “150 Years of Racing in Saratoga.”

Carter said the remarkable durability of Saratoga and how it managed to keep operating despite wars, economic recessions and other regional and national crises is not the only reason why it is widely considered the queen of American tracks and a national treasure.

“It has the most history and the best purses,” Carter said. “It’s also the most open track in the country, where fans can get autographs from jockeys and can get close to the horses. And there is a fun and family-friendly atmosphere with bands and entertainment, which you don’t find at a lot

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

31. The statue in the paddock at

Saratoga is of 1993 Kentucky Derby and Travers winner Sea Hero.

from New York during the Civil War. The race was first run in 2008.

44. Two fillies beat the boys in the

Woodward Stakes in a span of three years: Rachel Alexandra (2009) and Havre de Grace (2011).

45. Three-time Horse of the Year

Forego (1974-76) was 0-2 at Saratoga.

He won 34 times in a 57-race career.

His worst loss — seventh, beaten 18 lengths — came in the 1977 Whitney.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

32. Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States when the first race meet was held at Saratoga in 1863.

33. Rosie Napravnik became the first female jockey to win the Hopeful Stakes when she won it aboard Shanghai Bobby in 2012.

34. The first Travers Stakes was

run in 1864 and was won by a horse named Kentucky.

35. Hall of Fame jockey John

Velazquez has 685 career wins at Saratoga, which puts him eight behind alltime leader Jerry Bailey, also a Hall of Famer. Johnny V. will pass Bailey this summer.

36. Six races at Saratoga are

named for cities and towns in the Capital Region: Schuylerville, Lake George, Amsterdam, Troy, Albany and Glens Falls.

37. In the 1930 Travers, 100-1 shot

Jim Dandy shocked Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox. Saratoga then got the moniker, “Graveyard of Champions.”

38. Since 1976, Hall of Famer Nick Zito has started 1,740 horses at Saratoga, the most by any trainer.

39. Jose Santos won the Spa riding title in 1987. That ended Angel Cordero Jr.’s streak of consecutive titles at 11. Santos beat Cordero by one win.

40. The Adirondack Northway

was built in 1963, giving trackgoers a direct route from the Thruway exit in Albany to the racetrack.

46. The Forego, run on the final weekend of the Spa meet, is named for Forego the horse. It has been run at Saratoga every year since 1981; the first edition was run at Belmont Park.

47. Todd Pletcher, nine-time lead-

ing trainer at the Spa, set the record for most wins at a meet (38) in 2011.

That broke his own record of 36, set in 2010 and equaled in 2012.

48. Track announcer Tom Durkin has been calling the races at Saratoga since 1990.

49. The great Seabiscuit, the 1938

Horse of the Year, ran four times at Saratoga, all before he became the nation’s horse. He lost twice in 1935 and then won twice in 1936, including once against just one horse.

50. In Seabiscuit’s two Spa wins, he was ridden by jockey Jimmy Stout.

Red Pollard took over after that and rode the Biscuit in 30 of his final 42 starts.

51.“Seabiscuit” the movie was filmed in 2003 with scenes at the Spa, but the timing was wrong. There would have been no horses at Saratoga in the fall when “Seabiscuit” was filmed there.

52. The first time the Spa saw double-digit days of racing was 1870, when the meet was 12 days.

53. The largest weekday crowd in Saratoga history came August 17, 1983, when 34,287 came out.

54. On NYRA grounds, there is a parking capacity for 6,000 cars.

Year who once won 16 straight races, ran at Saratoga once, finishing third in an allowance race on the grass. However, he did attract a crowd of more than 7,000 for a workout in 1996. margin of victory in the Travers belongs to Damascus, who won it by 22 lengths in 1967. That was the only time Damascus ran at the Spa.

43. The James Marvin, the co-

opening day feature race, is named after the Saratoga Springs hotelier who served as the U.S. representative

was Labor Day, closing day.

57. Seattle Slew, the 1977 Triple Crown winner, ran once at Saratoga.

He won an allowance race by six lengths on Aug. 12, 1978.

58. Secretariat’s loss to Onion in the 1973 Whitney was two races removed from his Belmont victory, when he romped by 31 lengths.

59. Trainer Nick Zito ran 1-2 in the 2004 Travers, winning it with Birdstone and finishing second with the Cliff’s Edge.

60. On Aug. 13, 1919, Man o’War lost by a half length to Upset in the Sanford; it was Man o’War’s only career loss. Man o’War had beaten Upset in the Preakness by 1 1/2 lengths.

61. Eleven days before the Sanford, Man o’War beat Upset by two lengths in the US Hotel Stakes; 10 days after the Sanford, Man o’War beat Upset by a length in the Grand Union Hotel Stakes.

62. In the 1920 Travers, Man

o’War beat Upset again, this time by 2 1/2 lengths. There were only three horses entered.

63. Marshall Cassidy served as the track announcer at Saratoga from 1979-1990.

64. In 1955, the Saratoga Associa-

tion, which had owned Saratoga Race Course since 1865, sold its stock to the Greater New York Association, later known as the New York Racing Association.

65. There were three Triple Crown winners in the 1940s — Whirlaway, Count Fleet, Assault and Citation. Only Whirlaway ran at Saratoga.

66. In 2010, the Spa meet ran 40 days. But it wasn’t the first time.

In 1882, there also were 40 days of racing.

67. There was no racing at the Spa from 1943-45. The thoroughbreds ran instead at Belmont Park because of travel restrictions during World War II.

68. In 1946, the meet returned to Saratoga, and there were 24 days of racing. It remained that way until 1990, when it was extended to 30 days.

41. Cigar, a two-time Horse of the

42. The record for the biggest

|

69. The earliest opening day in history came in 1882, when the meet started July 11.

JOCkey RAMON DOMINguez

55. Jockey Ramon Dominguez won six races on two different Sundays at the 2012 meet — July 22 and Sept. 2.

56. The only other jockey to win six races on a Spa card is John Velazquez, who did it Sept. 3, 2001. That

70. Trainer Phil Johnson, who died in 2004, won at least one race at the Spa every year from 1962-2003.

The P.G. Johnson grass race is named for him.

71. Jockey Javier Castellano won back-to-back Travers Stakes in 2010 (Afleet Express) and 2011 (Stay Thirsty). The last jockey to do it was Please see FACTS 37 ▶

27

150 GAME CHANGERS

but the son of Sword Dancer romped to a 22-length win, and that margin still stands as the largest in Travers history. He was the 1967 Horse of the Year.

■■■Dr. Fager: The 1968 Horse of the Year, he won 18 of 22 career starts. He ran twice at Saratoga, romping to an allowance win in 1966 and winning the Whitney in 1968. The margin in both races was eight lengths.

■■■Manny Ycaza: This Hall of Famer

won 41 races in the 24-day meet of 1959, a record that stood until John Velazquez broke it in 2003. He won four riding titles at Saratoga, including back-to-back in 1963-64. Won the Travers twice, aboard Sword Dancer (1959) and Quadrangle (1964).

■■■Ramon Dominguez: Set the all-

time record for wins at a Spa meet (68) last summer when getting his second riding title. Has won 298 races in his career. He announced his retirement in June after suffering a head injury in January.

■■■Jaipur: The 1962 Travers has

been called the most exciting in the long and storied history of the race.

Jaipur and Ridan battled each other the whole way around the 1 1/4 miles of the Spa oval. In the end, it was Jaipur who held on to win the race by a desperate nose. Jaipur also won the Hopeful and Flash Stakes at the Spa as a 2-year-old.

■■■Shug McGaughey: Hall of Famer ranks sixth in wins (164) at Saratoga since 1976. He has won the Travers three times — including back-toback runnings with Easy Goer (1989) and Rhythm (1990). Has also won the Alabama four times and the Whitney twice.

■■■Tom Durkin: The voice of Sara-

toga Race Course, has announced races for more than 20 years. The race caller for NBC sports from 1984 to 2010, he specializes in thoroughbred horse racing. Although he’s broadcasted in dozens of venues and countries, he’s stated that Saratoga is still his favorite horse-racing venue.

■■■Linda Toohey: Executive Vice

President of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce from 1980 to 2005, founded the Leadership Saratoga program. She’s played a large role in the community over the years, contributing to various charities, nonprofits, and educational organizations. She was also named chairman of the Skidmore College board.

■■■Thomas McTygue: Former barber,

served as the commissioner of the public works department for more than three decades and was responsible for various projects and the maintenance of buildings and grounds.

■■■George Hathaway: Was the Saratoga facility manager for the New York Racing Association for more than 30 years. He was responsible for the design, maintenance, upkeep and overall improvement of the track over the years.

Library of Congress via The New York Times

The Civil War Battle of Gettysburg took place July 1, 2 and 3, 1863. The Saratoga Race Course opened the following Aug. 3. Among the challenges of running a track during wartime was finding enough horses, since many were pressed into military service.

of tracks.”

The first canceled meet was the summer of 1896, when, after three decades of growth, the track hit a rough patch.

Attendance and interest had declined in the early 1890s due to the inept management of owner Gottfried Walbaum, a disreputable bookmaker who bought it in 1891. Walbaum was one of the rogue owners of Guttenberg, an outlaw track in New Jersey that spurred a ban on horse racing in the state in 1893.

The profane and swaggering bookie, nicknamed “Dutch Fred,” got back into the game in Saratoga, where he also controlled the bookmaking. Many complained about crookedness, to which Walbaum gave a pat reply: “Nobody can

beat me. I’m just a sucker for luck.”

Walbaum also had a habit of gambling all night and sleeping past noon, so he changed the time of the opening race from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to suit himself. This angered trainers, owners, jockeys and patrons as well.

Walbaum clashed with the wealthy patrician families who controlled The Jockey Club and they could not come to terms over dates with the Saratoga Racing Association for the 1896 meet. The season was lost.

Racing returned in 1897. But gambling at Saratoga — wagering between patrons at the racetrack during the afternoon and at the gaming tables of Canfield Casino in Congress Park into

the wee hours — came under siege by an anti-gambling movement, which gained traction among the citizenry.

The anti-gambling faction was stymied for a time by well-placed graft, from Walbaum and company, that greased the palms of city and state politicos. But the balance was tipped in favor of the gambling opponents by Gov. Charles Evan Hughes, a native of Glens Falls and a reformer who targeted the vice of Saratoga. Hughes pushed antigambling bills through the Legislature, but they were weak compared to the tough laws of New Jersey, which included large fines and prison time for those convicted of betting on horse racing.

Please see RUN 30 ▶

■■■Mark Baker: President of the Saratoga Springs City Center Authority since 1984. He is in charge of many city events and conventions throughout Saratoga, and has been with the city center for more than 20 years.

■■■Phil Johnson: This Hall of Famer was the leading trainer at the Spa in 1983. His biggest Spa wins were the Alabama (1998 with Maplejinsky), Sword Dancer (1995 with Kiri’s Clown) and the Diana (1983 with Geraldine’s Store). He won at least one race at the Spa every year from 1968 to 2003.

Please see CHANGERS 30 ▶

28

SARATOGA 150

|

By the numbers

Below, Broadway at Congress Street in Saratoga Springs

By Steve Barnes

1.2:1: Ratio of the year-round population of Saratoga Springs to the average daily attendance of the Saratoga Race Course during the 40-day season.

2.14: Average number of persons in

a Saratoga household, according to the U.S. Census.

3:1: Ratio of sales tax collected in Saratoga during the first half of the year vs. during August alone.

12: Factor by which the rental cost for a

three-bedroom condo in Saratoga during the racing season exceeds the price of renting a new three-bedroom waterfront condo in Cohoes for the same period.

16, 450: Number, respectively, of year-round employees of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and peak number during the summer.

75:

Rank of Saratoga in Money magazine’s list of America’s “top 100 best small towns to live.” In New York, only two places ranked higher: Mamaroneck (60) and Harrison (70). Louisville, Colo., came in first.

$95:

Price increase for 18 holes of golf at Saratoga National Golf Course during racing season over the $100 charged in April and May.

Photos by John Carl D’Annibale / Times Union

$94: Estimated economic impact,

in millions, of non-track spending during the racing season.

250: Percentage increase in sales,

March vs. August, of capellini salsa aragosta, a pasta dish with lobster and shrimp that is the best-selling item at Chianti il Ristorante in Saratoga Springs.

14,000: Estimated population of

Saratoga Springs in the 1880s and in 1970. It is about 27,000 today.

▶ sbarnes@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545489 ■ @Tablehopping ■ http://facebook. com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic

Horse racing fans pour through the turnstiles.

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

BUSINESS

▼ CONTINUeD FROM 22

Broadway and Division Street was also an ornate Victorian building. The east side of Broadway was lined with the service industries that formed to cater to the city’s wealthy visitors, said Joe Dalton, who served as president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce from 1970 until 2010.

The Great Depression, and then World War II, sapped the flow of tourists to Saratoga. Although the Grand Union Hotel had indoor plumbing by 1877, many other hotels didn’t have a bathroom for every room. Visitors began taking trips elsewhere in America.

“There was one good visitor season, August,” Dalton said. “People waited until August to pay their fuel bills.”

By the early 1960s, the men and women who came home from the war to take over their parents’ businesses were unhappy with the way Saratoga looked.

Buildings up and down Broadway were in disrepair; retail vacancies were 40 percent and residential vacancy in the apartments on the second and third floors was 70 to 80 percent, Dalton said.

When Mark and Betty Straus arrived in 1971, local business was weak.

The architecture was slowly deteriorating on buildings that hadn’t been maintained in years. When the Pyramid Mall opened on Route 50 in Wilton, business fell even farther.

The offerings on Broadway were far different than they are now. Instead of high end restaurants and retail stores, there were auto supply stores and Army and Navy, Straus said, shops that did well in the 1950s and ’60s.

The Grand Union and

Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection of the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs

Looking North up Broadway with the United States Hotel on the left in 1907.

United States hotels were long gone, torn down in the 1950s. Only the Adelphi Hotel remained as a reminder of the Victorian era downtown. Congress Hall, which seated 5,000 people and was bigger than today’s City Center, burned down.

The Strauses opened Mabou in the building that now houses Bruegger’s Bagels. It sold clothes imported from India, gifts and jewelry. By the end of the ’70s, Mabou was selling designer clothes.

They joined a movement of business owners, chamber and City Council members and neighbors A group of business people who wanted a convention center couldn’t find a national hotel chain to come to Saratoga, Dalton said, so they raised the money among themselves to build one.

Once the financing was in place, the Holiday Inn agreed to manage the hotel and conference center that still does business at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Broadway, Dalton said. Next came the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, built in part with money from the state and through local fundraising.

In the 1970s, the Saratoga Plan of Action was writ-

ten, a blueprint for fixing up downtown and money was set aside for facade improvements on the buildings along Broadway, Dalton said. The City Center, expanded two years ago, draws a steady parade of conventions that supply visitors year-round.

In the late 1990s, condominium buildings began to spring up in Saratoga, first in Franklin Square and then along Railroad Place.

Residential construction just off Broadway is ideal for feeding the business district, Dalton said.

Jeff Clark, the president of the Downtown Business Association and a Saratoga Springs resident for 20 years, said the mix of new, old, independent stores and national chains gives Saratoga its success.

While businesses come and go, vacancies are rare.

Long-standing businesses like G. Willikers toy store, Impressions of Saratoga, Lillian’s Restaurant, Crafters Gallery and N. Fox Jewelers remain.

“You could compare Saratoga to almost anywhere and it would be hard to find such a unique mix,” Clark said. ▶ lhornbeck@timesunion. com ■ 518-454-5352 ■ @ leighhornbeck

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SARATOGA 150

Cashing in on the experience City, track are a brand that businesses hope will prove irresistible

By Dennis Yusko

E

veryone from small shop owners to top corporations want a piece of the action. Saratoga — home of horses, health and history — has evolved into a brand as racing turns 150 in the city.

To create a batch of Saratoga spirit, start with the Battles of Saratoga in 1777, when Americans defeated the British in their war for independence; add the gambling and health resort European settlers established in the 19th century; throw in horse racing, started here in 1863; and mix Victorian architecture and more than a few freewheeling entrepreneurs.

The upstate retreat first drew national attention for its naturally carbonated spring water. One of its famous gamblers started an annual thoroughbred horse meet in the middle of the Civil War. Since then, Saratoga Springs’ success has been inextricably linked to Saratoga Race Course, though that’s changing with the growth of high-tech jobs.

This summer, hundreds of activities celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of racing. The plans will expand the brand. Businesses and institutions across Saratoga Springs are dressing themselves in the red Saratoga 150 logo. Part of the goal is to further the Saratoga product, attract more national exposure and increase business opportunities.

Here’s a look at some Saratoga branding highlights, and what to expect as the horses start running: ■■■ Saratoga Springs hit the marketing jackpot in 2004, when Disney opened a resort hotel modeled after it.

The Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa in

Lake Buena Vista, Fla., bills itself as a “charming, Victorian-style” resort nestled between golf course greens and a shimmering lake. Rooms, according to its website, start at $367.88 a night.

■■■There may not be a more recognizable product named after Saratoga than the cobalt blue glass bottles made by the Saratoga Spring Water Company.

Locals started selling spring water from the Sweet Water Spring in 1872.

This year, they’re creating about four million “150 Special Edition Bottles” in a 12-ounce sparkling size and a 16.9-ounce non-carbonated size.

■■■Saratoga Chips markets itself as “THE original potato chip, made in 1853.” George Crum, a chef on Saratoga Lake, is said to have invented the potato chip that year. The company ceased operations in the 1920s, but was reconstituted in 2009.

■■■Saratoga Casino Black Hawk recently opened in Black Hawk, Colo. “The goal of the project was to provide a gaming experience that represents the elegance Saratoga has long been known for,” its new owners said.

■■■“Saratoga — Quality Salad Dressings” in Canton, Mass has a fun connection to the area, according to its website: “Grandma’s blue cheese dressing was the best in the neighborhood. But it took a stroke of good fortune at the Saratoga raceway 40 years ago to help our family realize a dream. Using the winnings, we were able to turn a beloved recipe into the beginning of a successful business — one that continues to uphold grandma’s core values of quality and customer service.”

■■■ Corporate sponsorships and advertising have become ubiquitous at

historic Saratoga Race Course in the last five years, with company logos for Dunkin’ Donuts, Coors Light, NetJets and more popping up around the track. Even the names of key races and giveaway days are sponsored. Coors Light will recognize Saratoga’s special anniversary this year by printing two million beer cans with the 150 logo.

Packaging will feature racing at the Spa, and there will be specially designed glasses, banners and billboards.

■■■ Branding depends on publicity, which Saratoga Race Course has received plenty of it in the last few years, free of charge. In 1999, Sports Illustrated ranked the track as one of the top ten sports venues of the 20th century.

In recent years, the city and The Graveyard of Champions have received free exposure on NBC Sports, in the blockbuster movie Seabiscuit and in marketing campaigns involving Hannaford supermarkets and Coca-Cola drinks.

■■■ There’s a decorated Saratoga 150 parade vehicle, a transportable fourstall starting gate for 150 events, special Saratoga 150 tokens for carousel rides and more. Stewart’s Shops are renaming their sherbet flavors orange, raspberry and rainbow sure-bet. There will be a sesquicentennial window contest open to city stores and restaurants. The Saratoga Performing Arts Center will pay tribute to 150 years of racing with a performance by The Philadelphia Orchestra on Aug. 8.

Oh, and by the way, the city of Saratoga Springs turns 100 in 2015. Plans for that are forthcoming. ▶ dyusko@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545353 ■ @DAYusko

John Carl D’Annibale/Times Union

Tori Rodriguez of Ballston Spa creates a chalk art rendering of the Saratoga 150 logo in front of the grandstands on opening day at Saratoga Race Course on July 19, 2013.

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

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CHANGERS ▼ CoNTINuED FRoM 27

■■■Leroy Jolley: Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987, he won the Travers twice — including General Assembly (1979), who owns the record for the race’s fastest time (2:00). He was also second in the 1962 Midsummer Derby with Ridan, who was beat by a whisker to Jaipur in perhaps the most famous Travers ever. He also won the Whitney twice.

■■■D. Wayne Lukas: He won four

straight training titles in the summers of 1988-91 and has five total.

This Hall of Famer has won the Travers, Jim Dandy and Whitney twice each. He had a dominating run with 2-year-old races, winning the Spinaway, Adirondack and Schuylerville six times each and Hopeful five times, the Sanford four and the Saratoga Special three times.

■■■Woody Stephens: Is best known for winning five straight Belmont Stakes (1982-86) but he also had success at the Spa. He won the Jim Dandy, Sanford, Saratoga Special and Spinaway three times each. He also won two Spa training titles, although he shared it in 1978 and 1981.

■■■Angel Cordero Jr.: The King of Saratoga won the riding title 14 times, including a streak of 11 straight years from 1976-86. Cordero ranks third all-time at the Spa with 459 wins. He only won the Travers once (1986 with Chief’s Crown) but he won just about all the other stakes races at the Spa. He won the Spinaway, Bernard Baruch and Saratoga Special five times apiece, the Sanford four times and the Jim Dandy, Alabama and Sword Dancer three times each.

■■■Pat Day: Ranks fifth all-time in Spa wins with 399. The Hall of Famer is one of four jockeys to win the Travers four times (1983, 1987, 1989, 2003).

■■■Chief’s

Crown: As a 2-year-old in 1984, he won the Saratoga Special and the Hopeful and had nine wins in his first 12 starts heading into the ’85 Triple Crown. He stubbed his hooves there, finishing third in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont and second in the Preakness. He righted the ship at Saratoga. Following a fourth in the Tell Stakes, he rebounded to win the Travers, the only Midsummer Derby Angel Cordero won.

■■■Easy Goer: Was a hard-luck

loser to Sunday Silence in the 1989 Derby and Preakness but beat him in the Belmont. Came to Saratoga that summer and dominated in the Whitney and Travers. Also broke his maiden there the year before. Had 14 wins and five seconds in 20 starts.

■■■Java Gold: In 1987, The Ken-

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Crusading reporter Nellie Bly produced a rallying cry for anti-gambling forces with her article on Aug. 19, 1894, in the New York World. The headline blared “Our Wickedest Summer Resort.”

Lurid sub-heads decried “The Shameful Story of the Vice and Crime, Dissipation and Profligacy at This Once Most Respectable Watering-Place.”

Bly’s sensational piece rallied the moral activists. Influential Saratoga residents, led by Wall Street financier Spencer Trask (founder with his poet wife, Katrina, of the artists’ colony Yaddo just east of the racetrack), joined the reformers and forced the closure of the track for two consecutive summers, in 1911 and 1912.

The moralists had their moment, but after two summers without horse racing, the pendulum of public opin-

ion swung back. Racing and wagering roared back on Aug. 1, 1913. The New York Times wrote: “Racing returned to Saratoga Springs today, with much of the glory that made the village the Mecca for racing folk for almost half a century... the enthusiasm that prevailed with the return of the thoroughbreds spoke volumes for the popularity of the sport.”

For the next 30 years, in spite of the global cataclysms of World War I and the 1929 stock market crash that set in motion the Great Depression, horse racing churned on without interruption at the Saratoga track, with only minor issues.

“There were smaller purses and the breeding industry was hurt by the Depression, but it kept going,” Carter said.

Rationing of tire rubber and gasoline during World War II proved a challenge too great even for the Spa’s record of resilience. The track’s boosters and Saratoga Mayor Addison Mallery managed to hold off calls for the track’s closure in 1942. But the 1943 meet was doomed

when Gov. Thomas Dewey signed an order that Saratoga’s August dates be run as a wartime compromise at New York’s metropolitan tracks. Dewey complied with a federal directive that urged the closure of racetracks around the country that could only be reached by automobile.

For three summers — 1943, 1944 and 1945 — the Saratoga racing dates were held during summers at Belmont Park on Long Island.

With the war over and an optimism in the air that spurred betting, Saratoga came back with a vengeance in 1946.

The opening-day crowd that August set a new record: 15,168 people packed into the old track, roughly the population of the city itself.

The dark days were over. Happy days graced the grandstand on Union Avenue once again. ▶ pgrondahl@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5623 ■ @PaulGrondahl

tucky Derby and Preakness winner (Alysheba) and Belmont champ (Bet Twice) came to the Spa to run in the Travers. They were not good enough on that rainy day to catch Java Gold. Earlier in the meet, he had also won the Whitney Handicap. Not a bad double.

■■■Lady’s Secret: As a 3-year-old, she

came to Saratoga and beat her own kind, taking the 1985 Test and Ballerina. The next year, she returned to the Spa and took on the boys and beat them in the Whitney, becoming the first to do that since Gallorette in 1948.

■■■Jose Santos: Won the 1987 Spa

riding title, snapping Angel Cordero’s streak of 11 straight championships. Ranks sixth in all-time Spa Please see CHANGERS 34 ▶

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lengths better than Mom’s Command, who would go on to win the Alabama Stakes in her final start later in the meet. Lady’s Secret won the Ballerina later in the Spa season and then came back the next season to beat the boys in the Whitney.

Aug. 8, 1914: In 1915, Regret made some history when she became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby. She showed signs of things to come when she took on the boys in her very first start, which came at Saratoga.

She won the Saratoga Special. If that wasn’t enough, she then beat the boys again in the Sanford and Hopeful before doing it in the big one in Louisville.

Aug. 20, 1994: On the way to becoming Horse of the Year, Holy Bull stopped in Saratoga to run against four rivals in the Travers. Ridden by Mike Smith, Holy Bull took the lead out of the gate and seemed to have the race in hand as he barreled into the stretch. But, as track announcer Tom Durkin said in his call, “There is cause for Concern...”

The horse by the same name was gobbling up the Spa track and posed a legit threat to the Bull.

Holy Bull would not let him by and won the race by a neck.

Aug. 24, 2003: This was a horse race. The Test Stakes had a furious stretch drive between You and jockey Jerry Bailey and Carson Hollow and her rider, John Velazquez. Bailey got You through a narrow opening on the inside turning for home, and they engaged Carson Hollow and Johnny V, who were right to their outside. It looked like you could not slide a piece of paper between the two fillies; they were that close. In the end, it was Bailey and You who got the win by the narrowest of noses.

Aug. 29, 1998: Talk about your tight finish! The Travers of this year could have been a triple dead heat! At the finish of it, Coronado’s Quest and jockey Mike Smith had a bigger nose than Victory Gallop and rider Alex Solis, who looked to finish

at the same time. And, to make matters even more gummy for the stewards, the James Bondtrained Raffie’s Majesty arrived late at the finish; he and jockey Jorge Chavez were only a nose away from the winner’s circle as well.

July 29, 1866: Kentucky made history the year before when he became the first winner of a race called the Travers Stakes. He wasn’t done with his summer running, though. He returned to run a purse race the following year. It was only four miles! Can you imagine? He won, but he always did. In his career, he hit the winner’s circle in 21 of 22 starts and became one of the first superstars of the sport.

Sept. 5, 2009: Rachel Alexandra, the 3-year-old wonder filly who already had beaten the boys twice in the season, tried again in the Woodward Stakes on closing weekend. The heavily favored Rachel powered to the lead and then held off a late charge to beat Macho Again by a head as the Saratoga rafters rocked and rolled.

Aug. 15, 1953: The Grey Ghost, Native Dancer, was perhaps the first horse to captivate the nation through this new idea called television. He won the Travers Stakes at odds of 1-5, winning by 5 1/2 lengths, to keep his popularity alive. He would win his next four races to finish with 21 wins in 22 starts. The only loss? The Kentucky Derby.

Aug. 13, 1919: The mighty Man o’War, considered by many to be the greatest thoroughbred ever, once won a race by 100 lengths. That is no typo. In his career, he went to the races 21 times and won 20. The one time he lost came in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga. There were no starting gates back then, and Man o’War got off to a slow start, spotting Upset several lengths.

He almost caught him, but lost by a half length. And no, this race was not the origin of the sports term “upset.”

Aug. 21, 1920: Man o’War made up for the loss at the Spa in the Travers. He would face his nemesis Upset and just one other horse in the Midsummer Derby.

There would be no upset on this day, as the big chestnut beat Upset by 2 1/2 lengths and ran the race in a swift 2:01.80, a time that would stand as the race’s best for 42 years.

Aug. 18, 1962: Neither Jaipur nor Ridan ever were inducted to the Hall of Fame. But the two put on quite a show in the 93rd Travers, maybe the best race ever in the long history of the Midsummer Derby. Jaipur, the Belmont winner, and Ridan, who was second in the Preakness, hooked up from the start of the 1 1/4 miles and stayed glued to each other. The last mile, the two horses were never more than a head bob apart. At the end, it was Jaipur and jockey Bill Shoemaker who got the final bob over Ridan and rider Manny Ycaza.

The final time of 2:01.6 beat Man o’War’s record.

Aug. 19, 1978: The Travers Stakes would be the last time that arch rivals Affirmed and Alydar would see each other on the racetrack, and a record crowd of 50,122 came to see it.

Affirmed had beaten Alydar in all three legs of the Triple Crown by slim margins. In the Travers, Affirmed was ridden by Laffit Pincay Jr., because regular rider Steve Cauthen had been injured

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Times Union archive photos

At top, jockey Mike Smith aboard Coronado’s Quest, right, edges out Victory Gallop, center, and Raffie’s Majesty in the 129th running of The Travers Stakes. Above, Alpha with jockey Ramon Dominguez, left, dead heats with Golden Ticket with jockey David Cohen in the 143rd running of The Travers Stakes Aug. 25, 2012.

in a Spa spill 10 days earlier.

Affirmed won the race but was disqualified and placed second after he came over in the stretch, forcing Alydar’s rider Jorge Velasquez to take up sharply.

Aug. 17, 1995: Steeplechase racing has been a part of Spa summers for years, and the New York Turf Writer’s Cup is the

highlight of the jumping season at Saratoga. Lonesome Glory, a 7-year-old who was the champion jumper of 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999, won this race for the only time in his career, but he had to work to do it. He carried a whopping 166 pounds — including jockey Blythe Miller — on Please see SHOW 32 ▶

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his back as he navigated the 2 3/8 miles and won by a neck over Mistico. Tough horse.

Aug. 28, 1987: The streak had to start somewhere, and it started right here, in a race called the Empire Stakes for New York-breds. Fourstardave, who was not well known at this point, won that race, and the legend began. From 1987 until 1994, Fourstardave won at least one race every summer at the Spa. Twenty one of his 100 career starts came at Saratoga, and the “Sultan of Saratoga” won nine of them.

Aug. 19, 1967: He only appeared at Saratoga one time, but Damascus made sure he made an impression. Third in the Kentucky Derby, the colt then won the Preakness and Belmont and then won three of four more starts before coming to Saratoga for the Travers. Only three other horses got into the starting gate with Damascus, and the son of 1959 Travers winner Sword Dancer got smaller to them in a hurry. He and jockey Bill Shoemaker won the race by 22 lengths, still the largest margin of victory in the race.

Aug. 5 and Aug. 8, 1978:

Before meeting in their epic showdown in the Travers, Affirmed and Alydar had to get to the race with Saratoga wins. Alydar was up first, and he seemed to have the tougher job, taking on older horses in the Whitney Handicap. It didn’t prove so hard at all, as he romped to win the race by eight lengths. Affirmed, the Triple Crown winner, had to work for his win. He entered the Jim Dandy and had to rally from a 10-length deficit before getting

by Sensitive Prince and winning by a half length. It was his ninth straight win.

Aug. 23, 1974: All Ruffian ever wanted to do was run. And, for the short time she was here, she did just that. In her first 10 starts, the closest anyone got to her before she crossed the finish line was 2 1/4 lengths. In her

only Saratoga start, she blitzed three other 2-year-old fillies by 12 3/4 lengths in a blazing time of 1:08.6 for six furlongs. When Secretariat was a 2-year-old, he won the six-furlong Sanford in a time of 1:10.

Aug. 2, 1981: New York breds were not supposed to win races like the Whitney Handicap back in the day. No one told that to Fio Rito, a grey who invaded Saratoga after being a dominant horse at Finger Lakes Race Track. He was owned by a guy who ran a bowling alley in Rochester. This horse couldn’t beat horses from the powerful Phipps and Rockeby Stables, could he? Oh yeah, he could.

Despite nearly breaking through the gate before the race, Fio Rito and jockey Les Hulet shocked the racing hierarchy, going all the way on the lead to become the first New York-bred to win a Grade I race. Of course, it’s not such a big deal now. But it was then.

Aug. 3, 1968: The Whitney Handicap has been run at 1 1/8 miles since 1955. It’s called a handicap race, because the better horses are asked to carry more weight. Dr. Fager was one of the better horses. In this year’s Whitney, he was asked to carry 130 pounds, including jockey Braulio Baeza, the most of any winner in the history of the race. He responded this way: Dr. Fager, sent off at odds of 1-20, overpowered three opponents to win the race by eight lengths.

Dr. Fager, the 1968 Horse of the Year, carried 130 or more pounds in the final eight races of his career. He won seven of them.

Aug. 16, 1930: Gallant Fox, the sport’s second Triple Crown winner, was the horse to beat in the 61st Travers. Bookmakers made him the 1-2 favorite in the field of four. The longest shot?

That was Jim Dandy, who was 100-1. On a muddy racetrack in front of 30,000 people, one of the top upsets in Spa history unfolded as Jim Dandy beat Gallant Fox by eight lengths. It was the only win in 20 starts for the longshot. But he had done it before at the Spa. A year earlier,

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Times Union archive photos

At top, winning horse, Holy Bull, of the 1994 Travers race at Saratoga Springs on August 20, 1994. At left, Fourstardave takes his final gallop on the main track of the Saratoga Race Course under his regular Jockey Richard Migliore.

at 50-1 odds, Jim Dandy had won the Grand Union Hotel Stakes.

On a muddy track.

Aug. 21, 1982: The Travers was billed as the battle between the winners of that year’s Kentucky Derby winner (Gato del Sol), Preakness (Aloma’s Ruler) and Belmont (Conquistador Cielo). With the hype those

three got, no one paid much mind to the other two horses in the race, Lejoli and Runaway Groom. Conquistador Cielo, the 1-5 favorite, and Aloma’s Ruler went at each other down the backstretch and into the stretch.

At the end, though, it was 12-1 shot Runaway Groom, owned by Schenectady’s Albert Coppola,

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who went by the both of them.

Runaway Groom, trailing at one point by 15 lengths, paid $27.80, the fifth-largest payoff for a $2 bet in the race’s history.

Aug. 16, 1941: Of the 11 horses that have won the Triple Crown, only three made it to the Travers Stakes. Gallant Fox got upset, and Affirmed got disqualified. Thank goodness for Whirlaway. The 1941 Triple Crown winner came to the Spa and only faced two foes in the Midsummer Derby. On a muddy track, Whirly — as he was called — allowed the two other horses, Lord Kitchener and Fairymant, to go for the lead while he loped along in the rear.

With 130 pounds on his back (the most a Travers winner ever had to carry), Whirlaway ran by both horses easily in the stretch to win by three lengths. He was ridden by Al Robertson, who was subbing for regular rider Eddie Arcaro, who was serving a suspension. ▶ twilkin@timesunion.com ■

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

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and they’re off.

For lovers of Saratoga, these three words stir memories unlike any others. Forever woven into a shared history that Hearst is honored to be part of.

Memories of a silent pact made when you caught a passing thoroughbred’s eye. Of times when all our differences were drowned out by the shared roar of the crowd.

To the faithful, it is hallowed ground. A place of renewal. Where gods named Man o’ War and War Admiral walked. And sons make pilgrimages to remember their fathers.

For Hearst Corporation (like many of you), Saratoga bonds generations.

In 1890, our founder’s father, Senator George Hearst, commissioned the track’s design. Today, great-great-grandson and Times Union Publisher George R. Hearst III continues the paper’s commitment to racing fans, the community and New York State. Honoring principles on which the corporation and New York racing were founded: to entertain and inspire.

We look forward to being part of the next 150 years of memories.

When horses run fast. (And hearts beat even faster.)

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wins (383) since the records started being kept in 1976.

■■■Personal Ensign: Thirteen times she went to the races, and 13 times she won. Eight of her wins came in Grade I races. She only raced once at the Spa but beat the boys in the 1988 Whitney.

New York racing’s Ruthless legacy Thoroughbreds’ racing success breeds even more for the state’s horse farms

■■■Zacchio: He was the champion

steeplechase horse from 1980-82, and, of course, he had some success at Saratoga.

He won the New York Turf Writers Handicap twice and had three other wins over the jumps at the Spa.

■■■Jack Dreyfus: Known for being a financial expert and establishing the Hobeau Farm in Ocala, Fla. Dreyfus bred and trained racing horses – one in particular named Kelly Kip won the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in 1996. Jack Dreyfus died on March 27, 2009 in Manhattan.

■■■Bill Mott: Before there was Todd

Pletcher, there was Hall of Famer Bill Mott. Like Pletcher, he owns nine Spa training titles. He won or shared the championship eight times between 1992 and 2001. Mott is second on the list of all-time winners since 1976 with 331.

■■■Chris McCarron: Spent most of

his time racing in California, but did come to Saratoga to win the Travers three times, the latest coming aboard Deputy Commander in 1997.

■■■Mike Smith: Was a mainstay on New York circuit in the 1990s.

The Hall of Famer won three straight Saratoga riding titles (1991-94) and is ninth all-time in Spa wins (334). Won three straight King’s Bishops (1991-93), took the Alabama four times (1993-95, 2000) and won the Travers twice (1994, 1998).

■■■Fourstardave: From 1987 to 1994,

’Dave won at least one race a summer at the Spa. In 21 career Saratoga starts, he had nine wins, three seconds and a third. He wasn’t a star anywhere else, but did shine in the summer (he holds the Mellon Turf course record at 1 1/16 miles). Is one of four horses buried on the Spa grounds.

■■■Go For Wand: Pulled off a solid Spa double in 1990, winning the Test Stakes on Aug.2 and then taking the Alabama nine days later. The popular filly is buried underneath the flag pole on the infield. She was brought back to Spa after dying in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup. ■■■Heavenly Prize: Was named the

1994 3-year-old champion, and, on the way, won the Alabama Stakes at Saratoga by seven lengths. The following season, she dominated two Grade I Spa races, winning the Go for Wand by 11 lengths and the John A. Morris by 8 1/2 lengths. She finished her career with nine wins in 18 starts and was second six times and third three others.

■■■Holy Bull: Winner of 13 of 16

career starts, the Bull only ran once in the Spa city, but what a race it was!

He won the 1994 Travers by a neck over a hard-charging Concern, one of the most exciting editions ever of the Midsummer Derby and was named Horse of the Year after winning eight of 10 starts.

Please see CHANGERS 38 ▶

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

By Tom Keyser and Barbara D. Livingston

T

his year marks not only the 150th anniversary of Saratoga’s opening but also the 10th anniversary of Funny Cide’s victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

Born at McMahon of Saratoga Thoroughbreds, Funny Cide became the first New York-bred to win the Derby, and he almost won the Triple Crown, finishing third in the Belmont on a sloppy track.

To most followers of thoroughbred racing, he remains the most recognizable New York-bred of recent years.

Is he the best ever? That distinction arguably falls to a filly born in 1864, the year after Saratoga opened. She won the inaugural Belmont Stakes and the fourth Travers, defeated the fastest males, possessed one of the best horse names of all time — wait until your hear her sisters’ names — and met one of the most tragic ends of any champion in history.

Her name was Ruthless. And in addition to all that, she forms with Funny Cide an arc — she at the beginning, Funny Cide at the end — that defines thoroughbred breeding in New York.

Ruthless was the first — and best — of five daughters of the dam-stallion combination Barbarity and Eclipse. Her sisters carried the names Relentless, Remorseless, Regardless and Merciless.

Nicknamed the Barbarous Battalion, they ruled racing for a decade.

Ruthless won seven of 11 races and finished second in the other four. She probably would have won two more if her owner, Francis Morris, had not “declared” her stablemate, a colt named Monday, the winner before two of their four meetings.

It was a customary practice at the time, as unsavory as it seems today, that an owner with multiple entrants in a race could declare beforehand the one with which he planned on winning. (Morris owned Throg’s Neck Stud, where Ruthless was born, in what is now the Bronx.)

However, in 1867 in the inaugural Belmont Stakes at Jerome Park, also in what is now the Bronx, Ruthless gained racing immortality. Despite Morris’ declaration for Monday, Ruthless defeated her stablemate and two other colts to win what became one of the country’s revered races.

Seven weeks later she captured the Travers, again outrunning colts. Observers called her “terrible Ruthless” and the “flying Ruthless,” and the legendary racing historian Walter Vosburgh called her the best filly he’d ever seen. Others considered her the best of either sex.

In 1975, she was inducted into racing’s Hall of Fame, only one of two New York-breds ever afforded the honor.

When Ruthless and her sisters raced, thoroughbred breeding in New York thrived. Farms such as Nursery Stud on Long Island and Hurricana Stud (later renamed Sanford Stud) in Amsterdam produced some of the country’s finest racehorses.

But in 1910, horse racing in the state shut down for 21/2 years after lawmakers outlawed gambling. Some tracks never reopened, and that, says Bob Fierro, doomed the breeding industry. New York began losing horses to Virginia and Kentucky.

“That’s where everything stopped in New York,” says Fierro, past president of New York Thoroughbred Breeders. “And it took 70 years to recover.”

Recovery began in 1973, when state lawmakers, serving in the same bodies that banned gambling more than six decades earlier, created the New York State Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund. It took a small portion of money wagered and paid it out as incentives to people who bred horses in New York (meaning their mares gave birth to foals in the state), raced New Yorkbreds in the state and stood their stallions here.

Two events in the early 2000s hastened that recovery. In 2001, the state authorized VLTs (commonly called slot machines) at the Aqueduct horse track in Queens and earmarked some of that money for breeding incentives and purses at the tracks.

And 2003, Funny Cide achieved

Courtesy National Museum of Racing

Ruthless

unprecedented success for a New York-bred and became a national phenomenon. Jeffrey Cannizzo, executive director of the breeders association, calls Funny Cide “the single largest marketing tool for the New York breeding program.”

When the casino at Aqueduct finally opened in 2011, money began flowing to the horse industry. Cannizzo says the breeding fund has doubled to about $17 million or $18 million per year, and purses have increased about 40 percent to more than $150 million per year.

Top Kentucky breeders have opened branches in New York and sent promising stallions here. Joe McMahon, owner of the farm where Funny Cide was born, added seven stallions in recent years, including Touch Gold, winner of the 1997 Belmont, and Alphabet Soup, winner of the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“It’s never been better,” McMahon says. “There’s plenty of opportunity.

The purses are absolutely incredible.”

For Funny Cide, things are going pretty well, too. He’s a pampered resident of the Kentucky Horse Park near Lexington.

Things didn’t turn out so well for Ruthless. She suffered an injury and didn’t race past her 3-year-old season.

Her owner took her home to Throg’s Neck Stud, where she had babies until her 12th year.

Then, in the words of Edward Hotaling, author of “They’re Off! Horse Racing at Saratoga,” here’s what happened: “One day a hunter went wandering through Morris’s farm … There was something in the distance. The hunter shot it. It fell. It was the great Ruthless in her paddock ... “ She lingered for 5 weeks before dying, “possibly,” Hotaling wrote, “the only famous thoroughbred killed as game.” ▶ Tom Keyser and Barbara D. Livingston freelance writers from Saratoga Springs.

MERRILL LYNCH CONGRATULATES THE SARATOGA RACE COURSE ON 150 YEARS OF RACING

SARATOGA 150

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SARATOGA 150

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The Travers that changed Saratoga

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Affirmed, Alydar duel fuels Spa into summer hot spot

By Tim Wilkin

B

et you haven’t heard this one before.

If you really, really want to credit someone for the popularity of Saratoga Race Course, summon thoroughbred legends Affirmed and Alydar for a curtain call.

In the summer of 1978, the pair of four-legged titans renewed their captivating rivalry, one that was waged earlier in the year while Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont to become the sport’s 11th Triple Crown champ.

They would meet again in the Travers at Saratoga.

“People were looking forward to the confrontation of the two in the Travers,” said John Veitch, Alydar’s Hall of Fame trainer.

The Travers Stakes, and Saratoga, always had been a summer destination for horse fans, but the Affirmed-Alydar duel just seemed to put more of a charge into the Spa. There were 51,122 people crammed into Saratoga that August afternoon to watch Affirmed beat his nemesis before Alydar got awarded the victory via disqualification.

In the six prior runnings of the Travers, the biggest crowd was 35,530, in 1977.

“People came to that (1978) Travers who had never come to the track before,” said Veitch, who was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2007. “I do believe that 1978 played a large part in expanding the fans’ view

of racing. And the non-fans’ view of racing. Once they got the taste, they told their friends. And they came back to the track.”

The Travers today is the one must-see race on the Spa calendar.

Long before Affirmed and Alydar, Saratoga was not considered the August place to be. Going back to the post-World War II years, thoroughbred racing was popular in New York state, but the popularity was at Belmont Park, Aqueduct Race Track and Jamaica Race Track.

“Racing was much more popular downstate than it was (in Saratoga),” said Allan Carter, the historian for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

There might be crowds of 60,000-plus downstate, Carter said. Saratoga, he said, would struggle to draw more than 20,000.

From 1946 to 1955, before racing at the Spa went to 24 days, there was a promotion at Jamaica, which closed in 1959, called “Saratoga at Jamaica.”

There was even talk in the late 1950s of closing Saratoga or having the downstate tracks race concurrently with the Spa. Gov. Averell Harriman signed legislation in April 1957 that guaranteed 24 exclusive days of racing at the Spa. If that hadn’t happened?

“It would have killed Saratoga,” Carter said.

As the decades moved on, downtown Saratoga got bigger.

More restaurants, more shops, more things to do after the horses finished running in the

Alydar, the rival of 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed, is led off the horse van on July 29, 1978.

Alydar would beat Affirmed in the Travers Stakes, getting the win via disqualification.

Times Union archive

Associated Press archive

Affirmed on the inside, ridden by Steve Cauthen, wins the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown, ahead of Alydar, ridden by Jorge Velasquez, in Elmont in this June 1978 photo.

afternoons.

Still, there seemed to be more needed to get people hooked on horses.

Carter said that when he was in college in 1974, he and his buddies were able to secure grandstand seats — which were on a

first come, first serve basis — at 11:30 a.m. on Travers Day. Then, right when Saratoga needed it, along came two great horses.

The people who always came to the races continued to come.

But, because of the intrigu-

Saratoga Race Course on your 150th Anniversary Celebration

Your rich history and tradition have made immeasurable contributions to American and world culture.

— Earle I. Mack

ing matchup between the two famous horses, fans who didn’t know the difference between an eighth pole and a clothes pole, flocked to the Spa. And they have never stopped. ▶ twilkin@timesunion.com

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

FACTS

▼ CONTINuED FROM 27

Eddie Maple in 1980 (Temperence Hill) and 1981 (Willow Hour).

72. From 1957-69, the Whitney

Handicap was restricted to horses age 4 and older. Three-year-olds were allowed to run in 1969.

73. Two-time Horse of the Year John Henry (1981, 1984) ran three times at Saratoga, but never in a stakes race.

The great turf horse was in three allowance races at the Spa, one on the dirt. He won once.

74. The Saratoga Special for 2-year-

olds was run at 5 1/2 furlongs from 190105 and at six furlongs from 1906-1993. It has been run at 6 1/2 furlongs since 1994.

75. The earliest closing day was July 29 (1866); the latest closing day in Saratoga history has been Sept. 7 (1998, 2004 and 2009).

76. Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey

won seven Saratoga riding titles (199497; 1999-2001).

77. On Aug. 8, 2008, trainer Linda

Rice saddled the top four finishers — Ahvee’s Destiny, Canadian Ballet, Silver Timber and Karakorum Elektra — in the Mechanicville Stakes on the grass.

78. Hurricane Irene ended the full

card Aug. 28, 2011, the day after the Travers Stakes.

since 1993. It first was called the Screen King and then renamed the Amsterdam in 1998.

81. Three Triple Crown winners won the Hopeful at Saratoga as 2-yearolds: Whirlaway (1940), Secretariat (1972) and Affirmed (1978). Whirlaway is the only one who came back to win the Travers (Secretariat didn’t run, and Affirmed got beat by DQ).

82. Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens is the most recent trainer to have won back-to-back runnings of the Alabama.

He won with November Snow in 1992 and Sky Beauty in 1993.

83. Personal Ensign, who finished her career undefeated in 13 starts, ran once at Saratoga. She beat the boys by 1 1/2 lengths in the Whitney, the only time she ever faced colts.

84. The first Travers Stakes, run Aug. 2, 1864, had a post time of 11:30 a.m.

Now, the race goes off seven hours later.

85. In 1977, 14 horses entered the Travers; that’s the biggest field in the race’s history.

86. Dr. Fager, the 1968 Horse of the Year who won the Whitney Handicap, was named for trainer John Nerud’s brain surgeon.

87. Exterminator, a dominant horse

of the early 1920s, won the Saratoga Cup four years in a row (1919-22).

88. The largest crowd in Travers Day history was 66,122 in 2003, when Ten Most Wanted won the Midsummer Derby.

89. Trainer Woody Stephens won

the Belmont Stakes five times. But he didn’t have that kind of success at the Travers. Stephens entered seven times but won it only once, with Forty Niner in 1988.

HORSE JIM DANDY

79. Jim Dandy, the horse who

shocked Triple Crown-winner Gallant Fox in the 1930 Travers, had a career record seven wins in 141 starts. In 1930, Jim Dandy started 20 times; the Travers was his only win.

80. The Amsterdam, a 61/2-furlong sprint for 3-year-olds, has been run

90. Nashua, the 1955 Horse of the Year, didn’t run at the Spa that summer, but he trained there for his famous race with Swaps, which he won by 6 1/2 lengths.

He did win twice at Saratoga in 1954.

91. The Sanford Stakes, the first

major stakes race for 2-year-olds on the Spa schedule, is named for the Sanford family of Amsterdam. They used to walk their horses to the track from the

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family farm in Amsterdam.

92. A horse named Fair Play won the 1907 Flash Stakes at the Spa. Not a bad race horse, but he’s known more as the sire of the great Man o’War.

37

tucky Derby and Preakness. Interestingly enough, Sword Dancer only raced three times on the grass, and he never won.

93. The trainer with the most Travers wins is Bert Mulholland, who won the Midsummer Derby five times.

His first win came in 1939; his last in 1963 when he was 79 years old.

94. Robyn Smith made history in 1971, when she became the first female jockey to win a race at Saratoga. She was set to become the first female to ride in the Travers that summer, but her mount, Ellen’s Voyage, scratched on race day. Julie Krone, who rode Colonial Affair to a fourth-place finish in 1993, is the only woman to ever ride in the Travers.

95. Sunday racing was held for the first time in 1975 and then discontinued for three summers. It returned in 1979 and has been on the schedule ever since.

96. Shug McGaughey, trainer of

Orb, this year’s Kentucky Derby winner, won the Spa training title in 1994 with 15 winners.

97. The last horse to win the Hopeful and then come back to win the Kentucky Derby was Affirmed. He won the Hopeful in 1977.

98. Regret, the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby (1915), showed she could beat the boys the year before when she won the Saratoga Special, Sanford and Hopeful at the Spa.

99. The 1962 Travers will be remembered for the duel between winner Jaipur and Ridan. Did you know the last-place finisher in the field of seven was the 1961 champion 2-year-old filly Cicada, who won the Schuylerville and Spinaway? She was third in the Alabama the week before the Travers.

100. For all the success Angel Cordero Jr. had at Saratoga, he only won the Travers once in 19 tries. It came aboard Chief’s Crown in 1985.

101. The Sword Dancer, a 1 1/2-mile race on the grass, is named for the 1959 Horse of the Year, who won the Belmont and Travers and was second in the Ken-

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF RACING

102. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, located across the street from the race track, enshrined its first class in 1955.

103. Only four horses have swept the major stakes races for 2-year-old colts — the Sanford, Saratoga Special and Hopeful. They are Regret (1914), Campfire (1916), Dehere (1993) and City Zip (2000).

104. Four jockeys have won the Travers four times: Jimmy McLaughlin (1881, 1883, 1886, 1888), Eddie Arcaro (1938, 1942, 1944, 1951), Braulio Baeza (1966, 1969, 1972, 1975) and Pat Day (1983, 1987, 1989, 2003).

105. Four horses are buried on the Saratoga grounds. Go for Wand is in the infield, and Fourstardave, Mourjane and A Phenomenon are at Clare Court on the backstretch.

106. On Aug. 1, 1973, Riva Ridge, the 1972 Kentucky Derby winner, lost to 56-1 longshot Wichita Oil at the Spa in an allowance race. Three days later, Secretariat, Riva Ridge’s stablemate, lost to Onion in the Whitney.

107. The largest margin of victory in the Travers is 22 lengths, set by Damascus in 1967.

108. A then-record crowd of 30,119 came to Saratoga on Aug. 4, 1973, and saw Onion shock 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat in the Whitney.

109. Commentator won the Whitney Handicap in 2005 and then returned to do it again in 2008, when he was a 7-year-old.

Please see FACTS 46 ▶

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05-3054 © 2013 Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI (NM) (life and disability insurance, annuities) and its subsidiaries. Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS) (securities), a subsidiary of NM, broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, and member of FINRA and SIPC. Peter A Mortka, Insurance Agent(s) of NM. Peter A Mortka, Registered Representative(s) of NMIS. Peter A Mortka, Representative(s) of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company®, (NMWMC) Milwaukee, WI, (investment management, trust services, and fee-based planning) subsidiary of NM, limited purpose federal savings bank. Representative(s) may also be an Investment Advisor Representative(s) of NMIS. Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and CFP® (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements. NCAA® is a trademark of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

So from one thoroughbred to another, we look forward to enjoying the races with you for the next 150 years.

Happy anniversary!

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38

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SARATOGA 150

Thoroughbred bidders Fasig-Tipton sales attract the well-heeled looking for the well-shod

By Eric Anderson

I

ts annual auctions here draw some of the world’s top thoroughbreds, as well as bidders with the means to acquire them.

Fasig-Tipton’s four nights of auctions at Humphrey S. Finney Sales Pavilion — named for a long-time auction announcer — draw a well-heeled, cocktail-sipping crowd who watch the high-stakes bidding for some of the finest yearlings on the planet. And this year’s auctions mark Lexington, Ky.-based Fasig-Tipton’s 115th year in business.

Terrence Collier, Fasig-Tipton’s director of marketing, calls the Saratoga sales one of the top four sales the company conducts each year — the others are the July and November sales in Lexington, Ky., and the Florida Sale in March in Boyton Beach, Fla. — and says that “emotionally, it is without question a favorite.”

And while the Saratoga sales regularly draw buyers from Europe and the Arab countries, he says, this year a group from China has also expressed interest in attending.

“I was dealing with an agricultural group this morning that wants to come to the sales and may come to Saratoga,” Collier said during an interview last month, although it wasn’t immediately clear whether they’d join the bidding.

But their presence likely would be the first representation here from that country.

The big story in the past few years has been the large investment from Dubai. Dubai-based Synergy Investments Ltd. is in its fifth year of ownership of Fasig-Tipton, and early on made its presence felt with a multi-milliondollar expansion of the Finney pavilion, increasing its size by nearly half and adding such items as an outdoor walking ring and a new bar.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum spent heavily in both 2010 and 2011, investing $2.8 million for one colt and $1.5 million for a filly at the 2010 auctions, and paying $1.2 million for each of two colts at the 2011 auctions.

The crown prince of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates reportedly is an avid horse and camel racing fan, although Fasig-Tipton auctions don’t currently include camels.

In its earliest days, Fasig-Tipton did sell working animals, road and carriage horses, in addition to thoroughbreds and standardbreds.

“Fasig-Tipton had given up selling carriage horses probably before the year 1900,” Collier said.

Fasig-Tipton also said it handled some of the premier thoroughbreds, even in its earliest days, including the

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

150 GAME CHANGERS

CHANGERS ▼ CONTINUeD FROM 34

■■■Sky Beauty: Became just the eighth filly to sweep the New York Filly Triple Crown: Acorn, Mother Goose and Alabama (1994). Won 15 of 21 career starts, including the 1992 Adirondack and 1994 Go for Wand at Saratoga.

■■■Joseph Bruno: Was the tempo-

rary President of the New York State Senate and also its majority leader. He also served as acting Lieutenant Governor of New York, and has multiple buildings named in his honor.

■■■Ellsworth Jones: Saratoga’s mayor for five two-year terms, which is one of the longest terms in history. He also served in World War II where he took a piece of shrapnel near the heart, which stayed with him until his death in 2006.

■■■Darley Stable: Won Saratoga’s

Travers Stakes in 2006 with a horse named Bernardini.

Darley is currently an international horse breeding operation owned by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the current constitutional monarch of Dubai. Darley purchased Robert and Janice McNair’s Stonerside farm and training center in Saratoga Springs for nearly $17.5 million.

■■■Todd Pletcher: Has dominated

Photos by Skip Dickstein/Times Union

Bid spotter Steve Dance takes a bid on a sales yearling at the Fasig Tipton Sales pavilion.

renowned Man O War, sold at the 1918 Saratoga auction, a year after Fasig-Tipton joined with top Kentucky breeders to conduct sales here.

For the Capital Region economy, the auction provides a big boost.

“It attracts a lot of folks from outside the area, so it has a significant impact on room nights during that two-week period” of the sales, said Todd Garofano, president of the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau. “They’re staying Sunday through Tuesday when we have the greatest availability” of rooms, he said.

And Fasig-Tipton has opened its stylish building to outside activities, including weddings and other events, Garofano said. Mazzone Hospitality, which operates a number of high-end restaurants in the Capital Region, is the exclusive caterer.

One wedding last summer was featured in the March issue of Martha Stewart Weddings, he said.

Allan Carter, historian at the National Museum of Racing on Union Avenue, says Fasig-Tipton has opened its grounds to accommodate the annual inductions into the museum’s Hall of Fame.

Fasig-Tipton also provides support for another endeavour, Blue Horse Charities, which seeks to keep horses out of the hands of “killer buyers” who would send them to the slaughterhouse after their racing and breeding days are over.

“We cover 100 percent of the operating costs and we match donations,” Collier said. ▶ eanderson@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5323

the Spa training standings since 2002, winning eight of the last 11 titles. He set the single-season record for wins when he won 38 races during the 39-day meet in 2011.

Since 1976, has trained 360 winners; no one else has more. Has won just about every race on the Spa calendar.

He has won the Travers twice, with Stay Thirsty in 2011 and Flower Alley in 2005.

■■■Julie Krone:

Has the most wins of any female rider in Spa history (144). She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000, the only female to be so honored.

■■■Edgar Prado: Owns three Spa riding titles (2002, 200506) and ranks fourth all-time in Saratoga wins with 433.

Hall of Famer won the 2004 Travers aboard Birdstone.

■■■Rachel Alexandra: She only ran twice at the Spa, winning one and losing one, but her victory in the 2009 Woodward against colts was one of the most electrifying wins Saratoga has seen in years. Rachel beat the boys three times in 2009 on her way to Horse of the Year.

■■■John Hendrickson: Husband of

Marylou Whitney, is the former aide to Gov. Walter Joseph Hickel of Alaska. He and his wife donated $2.5 million for the Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson Cancer Facility for Women at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. They also initiated the Backstretch Appreciation Program to benefit backstretch workers who work at Saratoga Race Course.

They donate much time and money to Saratoga.

Please see CHANGERS 40 ▶

A large crowd at a sales session at the Fasig-Tipton Sales pavilion in 2011.

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

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celebrating our community We enjoy living and working in our community for the same reasons you do. That’s why supporting our traditions and celebrations is a big part of our investment in the community.

KeyBank congratulates Saratoga Race Course on the 150 year celebration and salutes the committment to all those who have helped shape Saratoga!

go to key.com/community

©2013 KeyCorp. KeyBank is Member FDIC. Key.com is a federally registered service mark of KeyCorp. CS10891-29332

Your commitment can help lives blossom

THE COLLEGE OF SAINT ROSE CONGRATULATES THE

SARATOGA RACE COURSE ON 150 YEARS OF RACING.

The Melanie Foundation presents

The Saratoga Palio

Melanie Merola O’Donnell Memorial Race Half Marathon & 5K Run/Walk Sun., Sept. 15, 2013, 7:30 am Run, walk, pledge, or volunteer www.thesaratogapalio.com Race Expo on Sat., Sept. 14 Registration inside Hampton Inn

Melanie lived an inspiring life dedicated to helping others. To honor her, The Melanie Foundation invites you to participate in The Saratoga Palio: Melanie Merola O’Donnell Memorial Race, which will follow an inspirational route through her hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York.

Proceeds will go towards The Melanie Foundation’s scholarship fund for graduate students in the mental health field. This year, a donation will be made to support Jake’s Help From Heaven Foundation. This organization’s mission is to assist children and their families affected by debilitating illnesses.

39

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SARATOGA 150

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

150 GAME CHANGERS

CHANGERS ▼ CONTINUED FROM 38

■■■Bill Dake: Former chairman of SPAC’s board of directors, has made many contributions to the center including strengthening financial position for the arts center, increasing technology in marketing and renovating the amphitheatre. He’s also the chairman of Saratoga-based Stewart’s Shops and has made various donations to different charities during his career.

Photos by Paul Buckowski/Times Union

Saratoga provides signature moments

Children wait to get autographs outside the jockey’s room at Saratoga Race Course.

Autograph-seeking is part of the Spa’s tradition, charm

By Tim Wilkin

B

efore each race at Saratoga Race Course, the crowd of youngsters gathers just outside the jockey’s quarters. Little boys and girls wait anxiously, pen and paper in hand, for the moment when the men and women wearing the colorful silks on their backs and snappy boots on their feet emerge into the sunlight.

“As long as I can remember, there were always kids who wanted autographs,” said Hall of Fame jockey Bill Boland, who rode from 1949 to 1969 and celebrated his 80th birthday this month. “They would ask for your autograph, they would ask for a pair of goggles.”

It’s almost Pied Piper-ish, as the jockeys walk to meet their horses being followed by a small army of little people.

It happens at Saratoga day after day, race after race.

It’s doubtful it could happen anywhere else.

Boland recalled a race in 1949 at Aqueduct Race Track. He was riding

1946 Triple Crown winner Assault, who Boland remembers being sent off at odds of 1-10. Boland said they got beat, by a nose.

And the locals at the Big A were not too pleased with his ride.

“I had to have 20 Pinkertons (security guards) walk off with me,” Boland said. “The fans were throwing cans, they were throwing bottles. They were throwing everything.”

He also remembers riding at the old Washington Park Race Track in Chicago. At first, Boland said, riders walked through the crowd, but that practice ended quickly enough.

One day, a short-priced favorite got beat, and Boland said the crowd went berserk and channeled their anger toward the jockey colony. Punches flew and tempers raged.

“There was almost a riot,” he said.

Eventually, Boland said, the jockeys from each race had to be picked up at the winner’s circle by a trailer and taken back to their quarters.

Saratoga’s family atmosphere dictates no animosity toward the jockeys, no words to make a lady blush.

However, it’s not a perfect world.

A big bet lost sometimes means some disparaging remarks.

“You are always going to have a (bettor) who is losing,” said Hall of Fame jockey Jose Santos, who rode from 1984-2007. “Maybe one out of every 100 is like that at Saratoga. Sometimes, they think they can ride your horse better than you.”

Jockeys feel comfortable — and safe — walking through the crowd on the way to the paddock and on the way back to the jockey’s room after races. Granted, they are accompanied by a security guard, but the only real incidents come from the young fans looking for their signature.

“Sometimes you would walk out, and there were kids lined up on both sides of you,” said Hall of Fame rider Walter Blum, who rode from 1953-75. “It was like walking a gauntlet. They would ask for my autograph ... not the way they would ask for Johnny Velazquez’s autograph today, but they would ask for it.” ▶ twilkin@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545415 ■ @tjwilkin

■■■Sonny Bonacio: President of Bonacio Construction Inc., a construction company in Saratoga known for many projects in the area. His properties range from $100,000 to multimillions of dollars, and the company is ever-expanding in Saratoga and outlying areas.

■■■Bob Israel: Saratoga Springs developer who personally spearheaded the condominium boom in Saratoga eight years ago. He owns more than a dozen buildings in the city housing upward of 100 apartments and 25 offices. Lately he’s ventured into the hotel and restaurant business, which continues to be a prosperous market in Saratoga.

■■■Richard Bomze: Owner and

breeder of the legendary horse named Fourstardave, who ruled the track for nearly a decade. Bomze’s horse rightfully earned the nickname the “Sultan of Saratoga,” and this name became more renowned with each race he won.

■■■William Stamps Farish III: Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and also a breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. Farish III owns Lane’s End Farm, located outside of Lexington, Ky. Farish III was the breeder of Lemon Drop Kid, who was the winner of the Grade I Travers Stakes, annually held at Saratoga Race Course.

■■■Linda Rice: Was the first woman

to ever win a training title in New York, and it came at Saratoga in 2009. She had 20 winners, one more than Todd Pletcher.

In 2000, she trained City Zip to wins in the Sanford, Saratoga Special and Hopeful, the fourth horse to sweep the juvenile colt races.

■■■Nick Zito: Inducted into the Hall

of Fame in 2005, he is perhaps the most popular trainer to ever walk the grounds at Saratoga. He ranks fifth in Saratoga wins since 1976 with 187 and has started more horses than anyone else (1,740). He won a pair of Whitney handicaps with the ageless Commentator, in 2005 and 2008, and finished 1-2 in the 2004 Travers with Birdstone and The Cliff’s Edge.

■■■Jerry Bailey: The all-time leader in wins at the Spa with 693. He won seven Spa riding titles and rode in the Travers a record 20 times, winning three of them. He was also second in the Midsummer Derby six times.

Photos by Paul Buckowski/Times Union

Jockey Rose Napravnik is surrounded by autograph hunters at Saratoga Race Course.

■■■Javier Castellano: Has never won a riding title but ranks fifth in Spa earnings ($24,665,266) and owns 350 wins. Has won the Travers three times, including back-to-back Please see CHANGERS 42 ▶

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

Her kind of town

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41

Spa City was fizzling when Marylou Whitney arrived; she’s spent decades helping turn it around

By Leigh Hornbeck

M

arylou Whitney expected Saratoga Springs to shine when she arrived on the arm of her new husband in 1958. She expected to see beautiful people everywhere, all the shops open and parties every night. But that wasn’t how it was — attendance was down at the Saratoga Race Course, vacancies were high downtown.

“It was a ghost town,” she said.

Marylou’s husband, Sonny Whitney, was one of racing’s blue bloods.

His grandfather, William Collins Whitney, ran the race course at the turn of the century. A generation later, Sonny had Cady Hill, the family estate, on the market. The couple stayed at the Gideon Putnam Hotel.

But Marylou loved Cady Hill from the moment she saw it, and told her husband that was where she wanted to live.

“I said, ‘Sonny, with your money and my enthusiasm and work, we can light up this town.’ And he was right behind me.”

Marylou invited her society friends from New York City and her Hollywood friends from California to visit. She threw parties — the famous Whitney Gala at the Canfield Casino, where her themes, celebrity guests and over-the-top arrivals drew crowds — and hosted private affairs at Cady Hill where her well-to-do guests were shielded from public view.

As the track’s fortunes improved and drew a higher caliber of horsemen, the parties grew and multiplied.

The lake houses of the 1930s and ’40s — with their posh parties (and gambling) were gone, but black tie events returned. The old families whose houses lined North Broadway hired white-gloved servers and served the finest food brought in from New York.

In the late 1970s, when Maureen Lewi and her husband, Ed Lewi, arrived on the scene, it was a who’s who of bold faced names, Maureen

Lewi said.

“The big parties were Marylou’s party and the National Museum of Racing gala,” Lewi said. “It was a different way of entertaining back then, the men wore black tie, and women wore the most beautiful ball gowns you’ve ever seen.”

The style changed as the decades rolled by, and the parties, although more plentiful, became more casual.

Nonprofits used the opportunity to raise money for their causes. Saratoga Hospital, the National Museum of Dance, Captain Youth and Family Services, Equine Advocates and the Thoroughbred Retirement Fund hold their biggest events during the racing meet.

Joanne Abrams, the director of community relations for the New York Racing Association, attends events throughout the meet. NYRA makes donations to a list of charities every year, and Abrams strives to raise NYRA’s profile within the community.

Marylou Whitney found herself named again and again as the honoree at various fund raisers because her presence was a draw for attendees, said Maureen Lewi, who became friends with Marylou in the late 1970s. In recent years Marylou and her husband, John Hendrickson, have turned their attention away from glamorous parties to focus on the track’s backstretch workers.

“I saw the deplorable conditions where the people over there lived and it bothered me terribly,” Marylou said.

The couple developed a calendar of events — bingo, movie nights, dances and karaoke, designed to show the hot walkers and grooms appreciation for their hard work.

“I would rather take the money it cost me to have the gala and spend it on the backstretch,” she said.

Times Union archive

Above and at right, C. V. “Sonny” Whitney and Marylou Whitney in the 1960s. Below, Whitney waves to her adoring fans as she and husband John Hendrickson arrive in a Taxi for the Whitney Gala at the Canfield Casino in 2010.

▶ lhornbeck@timesunion.com3 ■ 518-454-5352 3 ■ @leighhornbeck Cindy Schultz/Times Union

42

SARATOGA 150

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ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

150 GAME CHANGERS

CHANGERS ▼ CONTINuED FROM 40

with Afleet Express in 2010 and Stay Thirsty in 2011.

John Carl D’Annibale/Times Union

Test your track knowledge

The historic Travers canoe in the infield pond at Saratoga Race Course in 2009.

By Leigh Hornbeck

1. Where was the original Hattie’s Restaurant located?

2. The meet was 24 days from 1946

to 1990, when it was increased to 30 days; it became 34 days in 1994 and 36 in 1997. How many days of racing are scheduled for this year’s meet?

3. What is the current color of the

Travers canoe in the infield lake, and why does it change every year?

4. A popular give-away, the bobble-

head, will return this year. In whose likeness was the first bobblehead the New York Racing Association gave away?

5. What was the name of the horse

that beat the mighty Man o’ War in the 1919 Sanford Stakes, the only loss in his 21-race career?

6.

Hometown hero Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but his owners never bred him. Why?

7. Which one of these was NOT a

racehorse’s name? 1. Arrr 2. Clones R Us 3. Atswhatimtalknbout 4. Oprah Winfrey

8. Horse racing wasn’t the first attraction to draw people to Saratoga Springs.

What was?

9. The founder of Saratoga Springs

was named, (a.) Gideon Putnam (b.)

Scott Johnson (c.) Sonny Whitney or (d.)

John Morrissey

10. Which jockey is considered the King of Saratoga?

11. Which trainer has the most wins in

Saratoga history?

12. Fourstardave was called the

Sultan of Saratoga. He won races here for how many consecutive years: 3, 5 or 8?

13. Which horse is buried in the

infield?

14.

There are four jockeys who hold the record for most wins in the Travers

Stakes. How many wins? And, for a bonus question, can you name the jockeys?

■■■John Velazquez: Is on schedule to become the Spa’s leading rider this summer. He has 685 wins, eight behind Jerry Bailey. He has five riding titles, the last coming in 2011. Won his only Travers in 2005 aboard Flower Alley.

He has also won the Sanford six times, the Whitney and King’s Bishop three times and the Alabama twice.

■■■Havre De Grace: For her career,

she won nine of 16 starts, the most impressive coming when she took on the boys in the 2010 Woodward Stakes. She won by 1 ½ lengths and became the second filly in two years to win that race. She had tough luck in the Alabama the year before, losing by a neck to Blind Luck.

■■■Ed and Maureen Lewi: Founded

back-to-back runnings of the Travers Stakes?

the marketing and public relations firm Ed Lewi Associates in 1975 and began doing consulting work for NYRA in 1976.

They signed a contract in 1978. Won the public relations contract for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

The couple sold the business in 2010 and are part of the Saratoga 150 Committee.

20.

■■■Mary Ryan: While announcer

15. How many riding titles did Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey win at Saratoga?

16. Who broke Angel Cordero Jr.’s streak of 11 consecutive riding titles?

17.

Todd Pletcher has won nine training titles at Saratoga. One other trainer has also taken the title nine times. Who is he?

18. Who is the last jockey to win back-to-back runnings of the Travers Stakes?

19. Who is the last trainer to win In the 143 runnings of the Travers Stakes, only one Triple Crown winner has won it. Who is it?

▶ lhornbeck@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5352 ■ @leighhornbeck

Tom Durkin is the voice of the track in the afternoons, Ryan has been the morning narrator for morning work outs since the mid-1970s. She holds encyclopedic knowledge of horses, jockeys and trainers.

■■■Joe McMahon: Founded McMahon Thoroughbreds in Saratoga in 1971 with his wife, Anne. In 2000, the Fitch Road farm was the birthplace of 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide.

McMahon has been outspoken about the future of the race course as a member of the Concerned Citizens for Saratoga.

■■■Barry Schwartz: A horse owner

since 1978, CEO of NYRA from 2000 to 2004, a tumultuous time for the organization. Cofounder of Calvin Klein Inc., Schwartz and his wife, Sheryl, own Stonewall Farm in Westchester County, which has produced 40 stakes winners.

Skip Dickstein/Times Union

Sackatoga Stables member and Funny Cide owner Dave Mahan spends some quality time with Funny Cide in Barclay Tagg’s barn on the backstretch of Saratoga Race Course in 2003.

Answers:

Times Union Archive

1. Federal Street 2. 40 3. Blue and orange, for the silks colors of the winning owners of last year’s Travers Stakes, a dead heat. Godolphin Racing, the owner of Alpha, wears blue and Magic City Thoroughbred Partners, the owners of Golden Ticket, wear orange.

4. Jerry Bailey 5. Upset 6. He is a gelding.

7. Oprah Winfrey, although there was an Oprah Winney 8. Natural spring water 9. (a.) Gideon Putnam Angel Cordero bobble head dolls, 10. Angel Cordero Jr. with a limited edition in the purple 11. Todd Pletcher silks, were given away in 2007.

12. 8 13. Go for Wand 14. Four. The jockeys are Eddie Arcaro, Braulio Baeza, Jimmy McLaughlin and Pat Day. 15. 7 16. Jose Santos, in 1987 17. Bill Mott 18. Javier Castellano in 2010 (Afleet Express) and 2011 (Stay Thirsty) 19. Shug McGaughey in 1989 (Easy Goer) and 1990 (Rhythm) 20. Whirlaway, in 1941

■■■Kenny Noe: He served as a racing secretary and steward at NYRA during the 1970s, was hired as president and general manager of the association in October 1994 and became chairman of the board in September 1995.

Then he took jobs of chairman and CEO in December 1996, becoming one of the most influential people in thoroughbred racing in America before he left NYRA in 2000. Noe died in May at 84 years old.

■■■Terry Meyocks: Named CEO of

NYRA in December 1996, resigned in April 2004. The mutuel clerk money-laundering scandal broke under his watch, but Saratoga set 10 on-track attendance records during his tenure. He has been the national manager of the Jockeys’ Guild since 2007.

Please see CHANGERS 44 ▶

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

They came, they rested, they partied

|

43

Over the past centuries, visitors to the many attractions of Saratoga Springs have included presidents, the superrich, jurists, authors and movie and television stars

By Dennis Yusko

T

Morrisey brought oil mogul John Rockefeller and a scribe named Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain.

Women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony, Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, French actress Sarah Bernhardt, composers Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa and author Oscar Wilde also visited.

James “Diamond Jim” Brady, a rich Gilded Age entrepreneur with a ferocious appetite, first arrived in Saratoga in 1896.

He socialized with Lillian Russell, one of the most famous women actors of the time. Actress Lily Langtry, John Warne Gates — an industrialist also known as Bet-A-Million Gates — and Evander Berry Wall, a prodigal dresser and socialite dubbed “king of the Dudes,” also entertained themselves around Saratoga in the late-1800s and early-1900s.

Frank Sullivan, a writer for The New Yorker, was born and started his writing career in Saratoga. Spencer Trask, a Gilded Age industrialist, built the Yaddo

AT C I R C U S C A F E

THE

he wealthy, powerful, athletic and artistic have played in Saratoga since the birth of the United States. Here’s a partial list of the influential visitors who came for fun and relaxation, compiled from interviews and published reports: George Washington, the nation’s first president, founding father Alexander Hamilton and Revolutionary War general Phillip Schuyler were drawn to the area’s fresh water springs, said to have recuperative powers.

Nineteenth-Century presidents Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan Jr., powerful senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, authors Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne stayed in the Grand Union Hotel, built in 1802, and Saratoga’s other grand hotels.

Saratoga grew into a national vacation resort, and later, a gambling mecca.

Railroad tycoon Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt spent 4 to 6 weeks a summer, mostly in the the Congress Hall hotel, from 1840 until 1875. (Vanderbilt’s great-great-grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, a successful businessman and racehorse owner, married Saratoga socialite Marylou Whitney.)

John Morrisey, a brawler from Ireland/Troy, held the first thoroughbred race meet at Saratoga Race Course in 1863 and opened the Canfield Casino in 1870. The meeting place grew into a favorite for the nation’s social and economic elite. Presidents Chester A. Arthur, Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant and Civil War generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan unwound in Saratoga.

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artist retreat near the start of the 20th century. Trask’s work helped preserve the city’s natural springs, which led to the establishment of Saratoga Spa State Park. Simon Baruch, a pioneer of hydrotherapy, evaluated the medicinal properties of the springs.

Some of the artists who resided at Yaddo over the years include Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Flannery O’Connor, Philip Roth and Truman Capote. Artists who have worked there have received 66 Pulitzer Prizes.

Saratoga came alive during the Roaring ’20s. Mobsters Arnold Rothstein and Meyer Lansky lurked around local gambling joints. The 1920s boxing champion Jack Dempsey, author Damon Runyon and a young Bing Crosby arrived.

Organized crime figures Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Joe Adonis and Frank Costello later came to the city.

In the 1930s, Franklin Delano

Please see VISITORS 45 ▶

Times Union archive photos

Top from left, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain).

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44

SARATOGA 150

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ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

150 GAME CHANGERS

CHANGERS ▼ CoNTINUED FRom 42

■■■Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid

Photos by Skip Dickstein/Times Union

Exterior view of building 97, a new dormitory at the Oklahoma Training Center in Saratoga Springs. Below, Workers continue to work on Building 90 at the Oklahoma Training Center, another new dormitory.

Essential, and all but invisible Backstretch workers called the ‘backbone of racing’

By Leigh Hornbeck

In

horse racing, the jockey, trainer and owner stand in the spotlight, but the dayto-day care of a thoroughbred is in the hands of men and women whose names rarely make news.

When horses arrive each spring in Saratoga, grooms, hot walkers, exercise riders, assistant trainers and night foremen come too.

At the height of the meet this summer, more than 1,000 of these workers will be in Saratoga. The majority will live in bunkhouses on the track’s backstretch. Most of the workers are Hispanic and many support families in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru and Chile.

“The workers are the backbone of the industry. We couldn’t exist without their hard work,” said Jim Gallagher, executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association.

For the first decades of racing at Saratoga, horse handlers slept in haylofts and tack rooms. The cinderblock bunkhouses built in the 1950s when the New York Racing Association (NYRA) took over at Saratoga were never significantly upgraded, drawing criticism that the franchise wasn’t providing decent housing on the backstretch. In 2010 workers suffered heat exhaustion because the concrete dorms weren’t air conditioned, nor were they wired properly for window air conditioning units.

Bedbugs are a perennial problem.

Last year NYRA began upgrading the wiring at its 30 bunkhouses. Two dorms were renovated and will serve as models for what is to come — insulated walls, expanded bathrooms, new roofs, flooring and siding. The work has cost $540,000 so far, said NYRA spokesman Eric Wing. He expects the final price to be $900,000 when all the work is done.

While trainers are in

charge at the barn, it is a groom’s job to bandage horses’ legs, clean stalls, feed and, of course, groom horses. A hot walker’s job is to walk a horse after a workout. If you visit the backstretch in the early morning, you will see dozens of hot walkers plodding in a circle with a horse at his or her side. A horse must be completely cooled down before it can be put back in a stall. A groom will care for three or four horses at a time and earns between $500 and $600 per week, while a hot walker will work with up to eight horses on a given morning, Gallagher explained, and earn $300 to $400 a week.

Night foremen provide security in the barn at night and watch over the horses in case of sudden illness. An exercise rider may work for several trainers, switching mounts during early morning workouts to ride horses at varying speeds and distances, depending on the trainer’s program. Assistant trainers share all these duties.

Gallagher said pay doesn’t vary widely among trainers because, “there are no secrets on the backstretch.” If trainers want to keep their staff, they have to pay them competitive wages, he said. The system is not without flaws.

In 2008, an investigation by the state Labor Department found 137 trainers underpaid their employees or kept shoddy payroll records. A year later, investigators had recovered less than a third of the roughly $900,000 they said the trainers owed their workers.

The Backstretch Employee Service Team (BEST) was formed in 1989 to support the workers at Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct. Formed initially to provide drug and alcohol counseling, BEST expanded its mission 10 years ago, said Paul Ruchames,

the group’s executive director for the past three years.

BEST works with 2,000 people, some who work at the downstate tracks year-round and others who travel between Belmont and Saratoga. A selffunded plan provides health insurance for all backstretch workers. All BEST’s services are free. About 95 percent of its $2.3 million annual budget is provided by NYRA and the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. Other support comes from donations and private contributions. Local people donate clothes and blankets — 15,000 items in Saratoga alone last year — so many that at the end of the meet, BEST donated clothes to other charities.

Many backstretch workers don’t speak English, but they don’t all speak Spanish, either.

There is a mix of dialects on the backstretch that reflects the variety of places the workers come from, Ruchames said. There is an inclusivity on the backstretch that comes from the language barrier, the type of work they do and the hours they keep, he said.

“It has its own culture,” Ruchames said. “There are people who have been here for years and lose contact with their homeland, but at the same time aren’t involved with America. They are supportive of one another, more so I’d say than what I see outside the gates.

They set up funds for someone who gets hurt or the family of someone who dies.” ▶ lhornbeck@timesunion.com ■ 518454-5352 ■ @leighhornbeck

Al Maktoum: The prime minister and vice president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai also happens to be a highly influential member of the Saratoga Springs horse set. The sheikh purchased a 106-acre horse farm adjoining Saratoga Race Course for $17.5 million in 2007, and is believed to be behind the Dubai company that purchased the Fasig-Tipton horse auction company a year later. The sheikh has been one of the biggest spenders at the company’s annual yearlings sale, held each August in its facility on East Avenue.

■■■Lucy Scribner: She created the Young Women’s Industrial Club of Saratoga Springs in 1903. The renamed Skidmore School of Arts won a provisional charter from the state in 1911; in 1922 it became a degreegranting, four-year college. Skidmore began admitting men in 1971.

■■■Marylou Whitney: She arrived

in 1958 with husband C.V. “Sonny” Whitney, but she made the town her own.

A renowned hostess and horse owner, she is devoted to many philanthropic causes and hosts nightly events for backstretch workers with her husband, John Hendrickson, during the meet.

■■■Sam Gross-

man: Better known as Sam the Bugler in his iconic red coat, he has been heralding the call to the post since 1993.

■■■C. Steven Duncker: He was

chairman of the NYRA board from 2005 to 2012 after a 19-year career at Goldman Sachs. He directed NYRA into bankruptcy protection from its creditors and helped guide the association to the extension of the franchise formed in 1955 to manage Saratoga, Belmont Park and Aqueduct.

■■■Eliot Spitzer: In 2007, tensions were high surrounding the future of racing in New York. Faced with competition to keep the franchise that allowed them control over Saratoga, Belmont Park and Aqueduct, NYRA officials threatened to sue the state over ownership of the tracks.

The governor resolved the lawsuit, ended NYRA’s bankruptcy, extended NYRA’s franchise for 25 years and restored stability to racing.

■■■Marshall Cassidy (1892-1968): He is credited with devising the modern stallstyle starting gate in the 1940s and perfected the photo-finish camera system. He was director of racing for the New York Racing Association from 1963 to 1968.

Photos Times Union archive

▶ Leigh Hornbeck, Tim Wilkin, Dennis Yusko

SARATOGA 150

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

|

45

VISITORS

▼ COnTInUED FROM 43

Tim Sloan / Getty Images

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Roosevelt dedicated the Spa State Park.

Sophie Tucker, a Russian-born American singer, performed. The Gideon Putnam Hotel opened in 1935. It became a stopping place for celebrities such as Bob Hope, Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.

Pop artist Andy Warhol attended horse sales at Fasig-Tipton.

Charles Evans Hughes, a secretary of state who became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stayed in the Gideon. In 2000, another member of the Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, attended the races. She said she used to come to Saratoga with her family as a child.

Former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and the queen of daytime drama, Susan Lucci, came to Congress Park for Marylou Whitney parties.

Trackgoers can often find celebrity chef Bobby Flay and David Cassidy, aka Keith Partridge of “The Partridge Family,’’ at the track. Other sightings include the late Davy Jones of The Monkees, chef Rachael Ray, actors Kevin Dillon, Saratoga native David Hyde Pierce and Yankees superstar stopper Mariano Rivera.

Former pro football coach Bill Parcells and Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson Jr., own box seats at the track.

Dubai’s ruler and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is a horse enthusiast who owns a 106-acre horse farm adjoining the race course and shops at the Fasig-Tipton pavilion during summers.

Actor David Hyde Pierce.

▶ dyusko@timesunion.com ■ 518-4545353 ■ @DAYusko

American composer Aaron Copland.

Bobby Flay prepares to watch his horse Unbridled Express in The Hopeful.

������ ������

Times Union archive photos

David Cassidy, actor and singer, sits in the clubhouse at the Saratoga Race Course in 2010. He’s among the scores of actors who have dropped in on the track.

Former Giants head coach Bill Parcells, who owns box seats, is all smiles, left, as he talks with winning jockey Ramon Dominguez at the Saratoga Race Course in 2012. Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson Jr. also owns box seats at the track.

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SARATOGA 150

|

FACTS

▼ CONTINuED FROM 37

110. The oldest horse to win the Whitney was Kelso, who was 8 when he won it for the third time in 1965.

111. The Big Red Spring, the mineral spring located near the paddock, was named for both Man o’War and Secretariat, because both horses were chestnut in color. It showed up outside the paddock in 1975.

112. The Prioress, a six-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies, is named after the first American bred and owned thoroughbred to win in England. That happened in 1858. The race has been run since 1948 and at Saratoga since 1987.

113. The first track announcer at

the Spa was Bryan Field, who started in 1940.

114. The first time the winners of the Triple Crown races met in the Travers was 1918, when Exterminator (Kentucky Derby), War Cloud (a division of the Preakness) and Johren (Belmont) raced. None of them won; Sun Briar did.

115. The most recent Kentucky Derby winner to win the Travers was Street Sense, who did it in 2007.

116. The most recent Preakness winner to win the Travers was Bernardini, who did it in 2006.

117. The most recent Belmont winner to win the Travers was Summer Bird, who did it in 2009.

Dandy winners, Stay Thirsty (2011) and Flower Alley (2005), won the Travers.

119. Jockey Manny Ycaza set the record for winners in a 24-day meet when he won 41 races in the summer of 1959.

120. That record stood until 2003,

when John Velazquez got his 42nd win on the 23rd day of the 2003 meet.

121. The most recent jockey to win

back-to-back runnings of the Hopeful was Garret Gomez, who won with Circular Quay in 2006 and Majestic Warrior in 2007.

122. The first time a movable starting gate was seen at the Spa was 1940.

123. From 1927-29, the official

name of the Spa big race was “Travers Midsummer Derby.”

124. Trainer Jonathan Sheppard has won at least one race every summer at the Spa since 1967. He was the leading trainer in 1984 and 1985.

125. The closest finish in a Travers came last summer, when Alpha and Golden Ticket finished in a dead heat.

Before that, the slimmest margin of victory was a nose, and it has happened nine times.

126. You might think the Ballerina Stakes was named because the New York City ballet’s history at SPAC. But it’s not. Ballerina was a horse who won the inaugural running of the Maskette Stakes (now the Go for Wand) in 1954.

She only won seven of 42 career starts.

127. White Star Line, trained by

Woody Stephens, won the 1978 Alabama. Ceasar’s Wish, the favorite, died of a heart attack during the race.

128. Trainer Neil Howard had

TRAINER TODD PLETCHER

118. Trainer Todd Pletcher has

won the Jim Dandy, the traditional Travers prep, five times. Two of his

two straight Travers disappointments.

His Grasshopper lost by a half length to Street Sense in 2007, and then he saw Mambo in Seattle lose by a nose to Colonel John in 2008.

129. Two of the past three Breeders’ Cup Classic winners (Fort Larned in 2012) and Blame (2010) won the Whitney Handicap the same year.

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

130. The first stakes race ever run on the grass at Saratoga was the 1903 Alabama; the race now is a mainstay on the dirt.

131. Buckpasser, the 1966 Horse of

the Year, won 12 of 13 starts that year, including the Travers Stakes by three quarters of a length.

132. The Evan Shipman, a race for New York breds, is named after a racing columnist for the Morning Telegraph, which published from 1833-1972 and focused mainly on horse racing and theatrical news. Shipman died in 1957.

133. Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens won four training titles at the Spa, including three in a row from 1971-73.

134. Seven fillies have won the Travers, the last being Lady Rotha in 1915. That is the same year that the filly Regret became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby.

135. The King’s Bishop, a sevenfurlong race on the Travers undercard, is named after a horse of the same name that won 11 of 28 career starts in the early 1970s.

139. Nine Travers winners have been named Horse of the Year as 3-year-olds, the most recent being Point Given in 2001.

140. Four horses who did not win the Travers would become Horse of the Year. The most recent was Alysheba, who was sixth in the 1987 Travers and named Horse of the Year in 1988.

141. General Assembly, who won the 1979 Travers, still owns the fastest time. He ran the 1 1/4 miles in 2:00.

142. In 1970, the leading trainers at Saratoga were Bobby Frankel and James Maloney. They both had six winners in the 24-day meet.

143. Flatterer, a top steeplechase horse from the 1980s, is the oldest living horse in the Hall of Fame. He is in his 33rd year.

144. Two fillies ran in the Travers in the 1970s. Chris Evert was third in 1974, and Davona Dale was fourth in 1979 as the favorite. She was the last filly to run in the race.

145. The original Travers trophy is the Man o’War Cup, which was donated to the Saratoga Association by the wife of Sam Riddle, which she was presented after her horse Man o’War beat Triple Crown winner Sir Barton in a 1920 match race.

146. Man o’War, winner of the 1920 Travers, sired two future winners of the race: Mars (1926) and War Hero (1932). Thirteen other Travers winners have sired future winners.

TRAINER BILL MOTT

136. Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott

has won nine training titles during his career. Oh, and don’t forget to bet his horses on his birthday (July 29); he usually wins one that day.

137. Since the arrival of parimutuel betting in 1940, the largest Travers payout on a $2 win bet was Adonis, who paid $53.50 in 1945.

138. Saratoga Race Course was named one of the Top 10 sporting venues in the world by “Sports Illustrated” in 1999.

147. Jockey Ramon Dominguez set the record for winners at a Spa meet last summer when he won 68 races in 40 days.

148. The most recent trainer to win back-to-back runnings of the Travers was Shug McGaughey, who took it with Easy Goer in 1989 and then with Rhythm in 1990.

149. The 150th Saratoga meet started on July 19th.

150. Track attendance for opening day on Friday, July 19, 2013 was 21,935

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Coming around the clubhouse turn...

TIMES UNION | ALBANY, NEW YORK

SARATOGA 150

St. Peter’s Hospital Foundation is about to cross the finish line, raising over $35 million dollars for The Cornerstone Campaign. With the help of The William Randolph Hearst Foundations and you, we can do it.

Log on to www.givetostpeters.org The Hearst Challenge - it’s a sure bet.

ONE MILLION DOLLAR

HEARST

A dollar for dollar match to finish the Cornerstone Campaign

St. Peter’s Health Partners, 319 South Manning Boulevard, Suite 114, Albany, NY 12208 518-482-4433

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SARATOGA 150

ALBANY, NEW YORK | TIMES UNION

Congratulations Saratoga on 150 Years of Racing History

Bringing Together The Best For 150 years, Saratoga Race Track has been bringing together the best jockeys, trainers and horses to America’s oldest sporting venue and our region.

Today St. Peter’s Health Partners brings together nearly 12,500 professionals in 165 locations to form the most comprehensive health system in the greater Capital Region of New York State.

From emergency care to heart surgery, from maternity to senior care…

St. Peter’s Health Partners is taking advanced, compassionate care to a whole new level.

WE ARE

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