With each passing year, my connection to horse racing becomes weaker and weaker. I can name only a few of the prominent horses who are now in training. Sometimes on major race days I catch myself thinking, “Oh, the Pegasus is today. Maybe I’ll watch it.” With less frequency, I actually watch the race. I no longer look at a calendar and get excited knowing that, say, the Breeders’ Cup is coming up soon.
Although my feelings toward horse racing these days seesaw between indifference and disillusionment, closing day at Saratoga Race Course still evokes strong romantic and melancholic feelings inside me. Because it happens on Labor Day, the end of the Saratoga meet symbolically marks the end of summer, which makes me, a native of California now living in New England, lament the end of the season and dread the approaching winter. And as a former NYRA employee who worked six meets in Saratoga (2010-2014 and 2016), Labor Day causes me to reflect upon my time at the Spa.
I was fortunate to have seen many great horses, jockeys, trainers, races, and moments in Saratoga. Blame nipping Quality Road on the wire in the Whitney, Blind Luck collaring Havre de Grace in the Alabama, the Travers dead heat, H. Allen Jerkens winning his final grade 1 and his final stakes, John Velazquez and Ramรณn Dominguez setting riding records, Tom Durkin concluding his career, and Arrogate emerging as a dominant force are just a few of those examples. Despite this, I felt ambivalent about Saratoga when I was working there full time. I remember feeling fatigued as I shuffled to the employee parking lot in the darkness at the end of a long Saturday, simultaneously feeling dread and excitement as I thought about having to be at the track early the next day for morning workouts. I remember scrambling to take care of all of my errands and chores on Tuesdays, the lone dark day. I remember struggling to get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet, or have a conversation about a topic other than racing.
Even though I was in my mid 20s and seldom stayed out late downtown, during my first summer in Saratoga I was not prepared for the physical toll that comes with working 6-7 days a week and by the midway mark of the meet there were times when I was feeling desperate to return to Belmont Park, sleep in my own apartment on Long Island, and use vacation days to do things that were not related to horse racing. In the following years at Saratoga I learned to take better care of myself physically and mentally, but I always felt a palpable sense of relief when the meet came to an end. I never did figure out how many of my coworkers and colleagues socialized, partied, handicapped, and gambled throughout the meet without succumbing to exhaustion. For me, Saratoga showed that there indeed can be too much of a good thing.
In 2014 I relocated to California to work at Golden Gate Fields. At my mother's house I found my copy of Finished Lines, an anthology of non-fiction writing about horse racing that had been given to me as a Christmas present when I was either 17 or 18. I reread one of the entries, “Getaway Days,” a chapter from Brendan Boyd’s book Racing Days. In "Getaway Days" Boyd wrote about how he became obsessed with racing and how he and his girlfriend decided to become backstretch workers before becoming burnt out and quitting. They then went to Saratoga and “went to the track every day, bet every race, had an ideal four weeks.” But for Boyd the romance was gone.
It was the perfect story, yet something about it had gone strange. Working at the track had depleted the story for me, had forced too much significance on it. Immersion in the betting life wasn’t reversing this process, it was deepening it. It was just too much.
When I left Saratoga I knew it was time to go on to something else, to leave the story alone, to stop enlarging it. I knew that if I didn’t, I risked losing it entirely, draining it of its true meaning, plundering the allegory.
I wasn’t meant to be at the track all the time, I now realized. I was meant to think of myself as someone who could be.
I still think of that passage from time to time and almost always think about it on Labor Day. I find it impossible, to borrow a line from Boyd, to leave the story alone. I seldom regret having left my career in horse racing, but on closing day I find myself missing Saratoga summers. For one day a year, I think of myself as somebody who still could be at the track every day.
Seven years ago today, legendary trainer H. Allen Jerkens won for the final time at Saratoga Race Course
Allen Jerkens, his wife Elisabeth, and jockey Junior Alvarado celebrate Go Unbridled's victory in the 2013 Saratoga Dew Stakes. NYRA Photo/Adam Coglianese
Back when Saratoga Race Course conducted racing six days a week, the Monday following the Travers was the sleepiest day of the meet. Mondays typically had the lowest attendance, but the Monday after the Travers would feel particularly subdued as it followed the exodus of Saratoga Springs summer visitors who would leave after Travers weekend.
Post-Travers Monday in 2013 could have been a particularly forgettable day as the races were conducted under gray, drizzly skies, but one of the great things about horse racing is how an amazing moment can happen when you least expect it.
Trainer H. Allen Jerkens had been competing at Saratoga since the 1950s, winning the training title 1971-73 and sharing the title in a three-way tie in 1977. Jerkens’ most celebrated feat, upsetting Secretariat with Onion in the Whitney Handicap, came at Saratoga in 1973. In my experience, no trainer inspired as much awe and reverence from racing fans, media, and his fellow horsemen than Jerkens, who had not just witnessed but made a lot of racing history. He earned the nickname “The Giant Killer” (a nickname he disliked) through his history of notable upsets, but to racetrackers he was just “Chief.”
Jerkens could be bashful and his voice was somewhat raspy and surprisingly soft, but his reputation was all he needed to have the full attention of an audience, whether it was a small group standing around his golf cart during training hours or a packed dining room at The Parting Glass tavern. He would sometimes make anachronistic comments, such as when he asked a reporter if he knew trainer Hirsch Jacobs (1904-1970) or when he made a reference to a movie that had been released in 1938.
Despite his stellar reputation, his stable had shrunk considerably by the early 2010s and wins were becoming scarce.
“We didn’t have a lot of horses,” said Fernando Abreu, Jerkens’ assistant at the time. “He was one of the greatest trainers to ever saddle a horse, but you would see all of these new guys with all of these horses, and he was down to maybe 15 horses.”
Teresa Genaro, teacher and writer, said Jerkens seemed to be self conscious of how his barn was no longer as competitive as it once had been.
“More than once, I heard Allen talk wistfully about not having his name on one of the jockey statues outside the clubhouse entrance, which honor the previous summer's Grade 1 winners,” said Genaro. “‘I guess I'm not going to have my name on one of the statues this year,’ he'd say, with a combination of resignation and sadness. He was competitive and he wanted to win, and it was hard for me to watch his stable shrink, his wins decrease. And he really loved Saratoga, and I think he hated feeling like he might be irrelevant.”
Although Jerkens won just 13 races in 2012, he did get his wish to have his name on a jockey statue as he sent out Emma’s Encore to a victory that year’s Grade 1 Prioress and he added a second Saratoga stakes triumph when Go Unbridled won the Saratoga Dew. A year later, both horse and trainer were on losing streaks as Go Unbridled had gone 0-5 since last year’s Saratoga Dew (but earning grade 1 black type along the way with a third-place finish in the 2012 Beldame Invitational) and Jerkens was 0-17 at the 2013 Saratoga Meet. It appeared that Jerkens, 84, was going to need Go Unbridled, now a 6-year-old mare, to repeat in the Saratoga Dew if the trainer was going to continue his decades-long tradition of winning at the Spa.
After saddling Go Unbridled, Jerkens and his longtime employee Bill Higgins walked along the path from the paddock to the main track to watch the race along the rail.
“When we left the paddock and went to the rail, Allen was talking about how Saratoga had changed,” said Higgins, who now works for Bill Mott while continuing to operate his Saratoga Garlic company. “When you walked to the racetrack from the paddock, [you would see a] big, white tent. He was talking about how the traffic patterns had changed, how the jockeys would come and go and how people would flow through the building.”
Breaking from the outside post in the field of seven, Go Unbridled settled off the pace early under jockey Junior Alvarado before she made a steady advance along the backstretch of the 1 ⅛-mile race. She made a three-wide challenge for the lead on the far turn before claiming the lead nearing the final furlong, driving clear late to win by 2 ¾ lengths.
Go Unbridled and jockey Junior Alvarado win the Saratoga Dew by 2 3/4 lengths. NYRA Photo/Adam Coglianese
“When he won a race ‒ it didn’t matter if it was maiden claiming or a grade 1 ‒ he had tears in his eyes and he would high five you,” said Higgins. “He would hit you so hard you would almost fall over backwards. He celebrated [Go Unbridled’s win] with the same bravado. It was a pretty long walk from the gap to the winner’s circle, and, typically, halfway there you [could watch] a replay of the finish of the race on the big screen. That day, when we started walking, you could hear applause. I can remember him saying, ‘What the hell are they clapping for?’ And then he realized it was for him.”
I watched the race from a television monitor in the communications office, located in a building in the track’s backyard. Immediately after Go Unbridled won, my coworkers and I simultaneously stood up and power walked over to the winner’s circle, where another contingent of media members had already descended from the press box. We all wanted to be there when Jerkens walked into the winner’s circle.
Genaro, who was at Saratoga that day to watch the races with her parents, reacted similarly.
“We were in a box between the sixteenth pole and the finish line,” she recalled. “It had been rainy, if I remember right, and I wasn't working that day; it was a pleasure day at the races. But when Go Unbridled won, I flew down the stairs and onto the apron, and I raced to the winner's circle. I was so, so thrilled, and my dad, who is an old-school racing guy, was pretty happy to see another old-school racing guy, and such a venerable one, win.”
The media contingent waited in the light rain as we waited for Jerkens, who was being congratulated by spectators as he walked from the gap to the winner’s circle. Some of us engaged in brief small talk, but we mostly stood there in silence as the minutes ticked and Go Unbridled, her groom, and Junior Alvarado continued making circles on the outside of the main track.
Almost five minutes after Go Unbridled had crossed the finish line, Jerkens arrived at the winner’s circle, and upon sighting the Chief the media corps in the winner’s circle and spectators on the apron and in the box seats applauded and cheered. With tears in his eyes, Jerkens nodded ever-so-slightly to acknowledge the standing ovation.
“Returning to the winner’s circle is Allen Jerkens, who has been winning races at Saratoga since Harry Truman was president of the United States,” announced Tom Durkin.
Jerkens, who had long been the contemplative type, was even more reflective than usual when addressing the media after the race.
"It means a lot more [to win] at Saratoga. Every place you win and anytime you win a stake, it's just great. I've always been that way [emotional in the winner's circle]. You think of all the times when you didn't do nothing, you know. Well, we've had our bad days [but] we've come around, and that's what counts. This is the first one we've won here [this year], so we're off the duck."
The 2013 Saratoga Dew would end up being the final stakes victory in Jerkens’ career, which, in addition to Onion’s and Prove Out’s upsets at the expense of Secretariat, included Beau Purple’s three triumphs over Kelso, Wagon Limit stunning Gentlemen and Skip Away in the 1998 Jockey Club Gold Cup, and Society Selection capturing the 2004 Test at seven furlongs before coming back three weeks later to take the Alabama at 1 ¼ miles.
Jerkens never again started a horse at Saratoga, deciding in 2014 to stay in Florida for the entire year. His wife, Elisabeth, died of heart failure August 3, 2014 at the age of 86. Jerkens died March 18, 2015 after having been hospitalized several weeks with an infection, with his final win coming from his penultimate starter, Easement, who won a maiden special weight March 6 at Gulfstream Park. Go Unbridled made one more start following the 2013 Saratoga Dew, finishing fourth in the John Hettinger in September at Belmont Park. The Jerkens name lives on in racing, with his sons Jimmy and Steven competing as trainers in New York and Florida and his grandson David serving as racing secretary at Del Mar.
Abreu, who worked for Jerkens for almost two decades, took out his trainer’s license following the death of his renowned and beloved boss and has competed primarily in Florida since 2015. For Abreu, the Chief’s legacy is one of hard work, love for his horses and for the sport, and high demands and respect for his employees.
“[Jerkens] always paid attention,” said Abreu. “It didn’t matter how old he was. He was there early in the morning, he came back to feed them in the afternoon, and after dinner he would go by his barn and check on his horses and see if they ate. He never lost that will to work. I try to follow him. I go to the barn at least three times a day. I look at the horses. Did they eat? Did they back off their feed? How do they look? How are they pointing their legs in the stall? Stuff like that, especially when they are relaxed and quiet. I try to do certain things, but I just can’t get it right like he did, even if I worked for him for 19 years. He knew exactly what to do and what not to do. He didn’t want to leave no stone unturned. Yes, he would scream at you, but you wouldn’t go home without him making up with you. He would look for a way. He would have a beer with you in the afternoon. If you did something wrong, he was going to let you know, but he was like a big teddy bear.”
Given what Jerkens meant to the sport, I will always be glad that all of us at the track seven years ago gave the legendary horseman a Saratoga sendoff worthy of a Chief.
With the exception of the tracks that host boutique meets, racetracks and off-track betting facilities tend to be places where socializing can easily be kept to a minimum. It does not seem hyperbolic to imagine a scene where a horseplayer drops dead and everybody else responds by stepping over the dead body in order to put down a wager on the upcoming race from Hawthorne.
But it is this cold aloofness that, in a weird way, makes racetracks incredibly inclusive places. They are places where you can go where nobody cares about your family background, education level, income, or ‒ in my case when I was 8 years old ‒ if you are covered in scabs due to a recent case of chickenpox. Everybody is too preoccupied with their gambling to find any perceived deficiencies in others, giving visitors the chance to have a communal experience while requiring minimal human interaction. There may already be a stigma about going to the track, but there is no extra stigma for going alone.
When I was young, I frequently tagged along with my father when he went to Bay Meadows, but by the time I was in grade school my interest in the sport waned and my trips became increasingly sporadic. Due to a confluence of factors, I redeveloped an interest in horse racing when I was in high school and I found myself reading racing websites, avoiding homework by lingering on racing message boards, and recording the local replay television show in addition to joining my father on his trips to the track. My father was no longer asking me if I wanted to go to the track. Instead, I was asking him if we could go (“We have to go to the track this weekend! It’s the San Francisco Mile, the only grade 2 race in Northern California!”).
I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, but years later I realized that the racetrack was a safe haven for me, a place I could wander and explore on my own and not have to think about my high school anxieties. Although my high school experience was unremarkable and I had a group of friends, I certainly was not cool. At the track, I did not have to worry about grades or social status and could instead focus on trying to figure out who was going to win the upcoming race for $6,250 claimers.
I became so captivated by racing that I decided to pursue a career in the industry. I had become drawn to the sport because it was a haven for outsiders, but once I started working in the industry my livelihood depended on me becoming an insider. It was an unfamiliar position for me, and I never felt 100% comfortable with it.
I started thinking about the topic of solitary racetrack experiences last summer when NYRA announced it was developing the sections at the end of its lengthy grandstand into The Stretch, a “exclusive, private hospitality area” featuring “modern and upscale amenities.” The blogger Jessica Chapel lamented the change because the end sections were one of her favorite places to watch races by herself, and I saw a separate conversation on Facebook about how private locations at racetracks seem to be disappearing. I recently reached out to Jessica Chapel and a few other people I know to get their thoughts about their own solitary racetrack experiences.
It's something about the track that has spoken to me from the first — horseplayers are a community and yet it's one in which everyone is very happy to leave each other alone. It was also something I appreciated about NYC OTB. I have found among other horseplayers solace and solitude at times when I needed both and that a space exists for that to happen sometimes seems miraculous, it's so out of step with how many spaces are built now.
A member of horse racing media who asked to remain anonymous:
I
definitely spent more enjoyable time wandering around [my local track]
by myself with a camera in my hand than I did attending huge racing days
during my early days at the track. It had a lot of appeal for me as an
introvert. You have the freedom to do anything you want within the
structure of the race card.
Jessica Paquette, senior vice president of marketing at Suffolk Downs:
I’ve
always thought of the racetrack as the island of misfit toys - I had
never felt like I really fit in anywhere until I found the racetrack and
there’s still nowhere else I’m more comfortable. Being
so public facing in racing has definitely changed that experience for
me - doing the broadcast at Suffolk for more than a decade has made me
more recognizable than I’d often prefer to local fans. I can’t just go
hang out at Suffolk to watch simulcasting - I sort of always have to be
“on”. Luckily, at any other racetrack I can be totally anonymous but I
do often feel a little self imposed pressure to be social
professionally.
Joe Nevills, bloodstock editor for the Paulick Report and blogger:
It wasn’t hard to find a place to watch the races by yourself at Mount Pleasant Meadows, a track where the average daily attendance might reach three digits if you count the jockeys in the irons.
This was fine by me. The roar of a thousands-strong crowd is intoxicating, but only for those desperate moments between the final turn and the finish. You only pick up the macro-details. Nothing matters to a crowd except the outcome of the race. In my time alone at the racetrack, I found the true beauty of the sport in its everyday details.
My favorite place to do this was at the top of the stretch, where it was me, the medics in a rumbling ambulance who mostly just got to watch a day at the races, and the hornets in the fenceposts that I needed to avoid.
Mount Pleasant was a four-furlong oval with a long Quarter Horse chute emptying into the stretch. Nearly every race started in that chute, since there was no rush to move the gate out of the way when the horses came back around. This meant every horse and rider had to pass in front of me to go to the gates, the starting gate was often set up right in front of me, and I was still close enough to the finish that I could probably figure out who won from my vantage point.
This meant I could hear nearly everything that was going on during the most important parts of a race. I could hear the jockeys talking to the outriders and amongst themselves as they headed behind the gate and hear the air rush through the noses of their mounts on the way by. I could hear the starter call for each number to be loaded, and then the gate crew communicate with the starter with colorful language when a horse was acting up.
When the gates opened, I could hear the jockeys chirp, smooch, and whip as they urged their horses ahead. What was more interesting, though, was once the horses were on their way, and the gate was quiet again. You could hear the gate crew – many of them the trainers of the horses in the race – commenting on the race as it happened. The racehorses plodded by in an instant, I’d shoot a photo of them making the turn for my records, and then the trainers/gate crew/pony riders followed behind to unsaddle their charges and start the process over again.
The kind of insight you picked up from that spot on the rail, on both the races in progress and life at large, could only come at a place where the horsemen were forced to do it all themselves, and spent a ton of time together. The conversations were usually mundane – I never got a single last-minute tip from my eavesdropping that led me to rush to the nearest betting window – but this was still a glance into normal life for a racetracker that most on the spectator side of the fence are never privy to.
The wave of sound that follows a great horse in a great race ignites a powerful infatuation with the sport of horse racing, but crowds are fickle. They disperse once they get what they want, and they have a short memory once they’re gone. Love is individual, found by the ones who stick around and take the time to listen and learn, even in the most mundane of times. The top of the stretch at Mount Pleasant Meadows is one of the places where I learned to love horse racing.
