SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — There are so many images that depict the havoc COVID-19 wreaked on horse racing’s signature track, but the one that captures it best is simply a shot of green grass.
The scene was the back yard of Saratoga Race Course on closing weekend, when in any other year you would be hard-pressed to find a blade of grass let alone an expanse. By the end of the 40-day meet the turf that is dotted with trees and televisions mounted on poles is typically trampled to dirt, the grass having fallen victim to thousands of feet, coolers, blankets, lawn chairs and picnic tables.
Only in the era of COVID could something that is customarily a sign of hope and rebirth serve as yet another reminder of all that has been lost.
If you’ve never been to Saratoga, it may be hard to fully comprehend, but there is simply no place like it. Only there can you find millionaires rubbing elbows with beer-drinking frat brothers, serious gamblers in line next to $2 bettors and patrons wearing Ralph Lauren suits in the box seats and shorts and T-shirts in the backyard.
Saratoga is a place where cultures converge, and it just happens to have the best racing in the country, if not the world. The fans are literally on top of the action, lining the paths where the horses are walked to the paddock before the races and the riders take to return to the jockeys’ room.
Whether it’s a child asking for a pair of goggles or an adult taking a selfie with a jockey or trainer, nowhere in sports do fans have better access to the stars of the show, human and equine.
And they come in droves. Paid attendance at Saratoga was more than 1,000,000 every year from 2015-19, even while slightly inflated by giveaway days and season pass holders counted as being there every day. So, when the inevitable announcement was made that the 2020 meet would be run without fans, it hit especially hard for those who consider Saratoga a cathedral as much as a racetrack. I can think of dozens, if not hundreds, of people who fall into that category — and those are just the Lynners.
I made two trips to Saratoga this summer to work. Normally, I would put quote marks around “work” when using it to describe covering racing at Saratoga, indicating the challenge of balancing business with pleasure. Not this year. With my betting brethren Moona Mullins and Don Baker back in Lynn, Paul MacDonald in Swampscott, Doc Jeff Morer and Tom Sofish in Florida and Jaime Herman in New York City, I would be flying solo.
After watching horse racing without fans on TV for months — thankfully, the show did go on, even when all other sports were shuttered — I knew what to expect at Saratoga when I arrived for the first time August 7. At least I thought I did.
Eerie is an overused word when it comes to describing a scene with such contradiction, but that’s the best I can do. The virtual silence in the backyard. Picnic tables that people sprint to reserve stacked outside the fence. Concession stands closed — other than Shake Shack, thank God. An empty grandstand.
Eerie, indeed.
I would say the only thing I didn’t miss was the protesting PETA pinheads, but a few of them actually did show up one day, apparently having missed the no-fans memo.
Attendance, which was limited to track employees, horsemen, owners, and a limited number media (negative COVID test required), was in the low hundreds. Masks were obviously required. The New York Racing Association deserves high praise for pulling off this meet under the most trying of circumstances.
On the bright side, the racing was as good as ever, though there were moments especially dampened by the lack of fans.
With a command performance in the Travers, Tiz the Law deserved to return to the winner’s circle to the same thunderous applause that awaited Rachel Alexandra after the 2009 Woodward or Catholic Boy after the 2018 Travers.
The incomparable Ortiz brothers — Irad Jr. and Jose — who took the battle for leading jockey down to the last race on the last day Monday, with Irad winning by one, should have had writer’s cramp from signing autographs throughout the meet.
It would have been nice for the understated Todd Pletcher to hear how much fans appreciated his capturing his 14th training title, after ceding the crown to Chad Brown the last two years.
Saratoga Springs was far from a ghost town the two weekends I was there, as many racing fans made the pilgrimage even though they could not get in to watch the races. The sheer passion people feel for Saratoga came into focus for me one day after leaving the Oklahoma training track that sits across Union Avenue and seeing dozens of people peering through the fence simply to get a glimpse of morning workouts.
The culmination of an upside-down summer in horse racing was watching the Kentucky Derby, typically run on the first Saturday in May, from Saratoga on the first Saturday in September. The exclamation point was the hometown hero, New York-bred Tiz the Law, losing as the heavy favorite, dashing his Triple Crown dream. Brutal.
Please hurry, 2021.
Paul Halloran is managing editor at Grant Communications Consulting Group and a correspondent for the Saratoga Special and thisishorseracing.com.
