New York’s Changing of the Guard : Switch of Racing Site Brings Saratoga Springs to Life

The July lull in the New York season has never been more tedious nor the change of scenery more welcome. With a collective sigh of relief, the New York racing colony hit the road from Belmont, as tradition dictates, for Saratoga Springs immediately following Monday’s ninth race.

It is a unique move ingrained in the Saratoga ritual. Nowhere else does a racing association close one meeting, move 200 miles overnight and open at another site in less than 48 hours. A steady stream of horse vans began moving up the Thruway last week followed by some 2,000 backstretch workers. The New York Racing Association sends 400 of its employees, another 200 employees of its security firm and caterer make the move. And 2,000 people will be hired upstate. Several hundred trainers, owners and jockeys, agents of every description, a core of serious horseplayers, painters of race horses, sculptors of race, photographers, and writers join the traffic on the road to the August idyll. The NYRA will need five tractor trailers and 20 vans to transport equipment from Belmont to Saratoga, where the peppermint-striped awnings are in place and the merchants are expecting a big month. Before this process is repeated in reverse at month’s end, the Saratoga meeting will inject about $10 million into the economy of a town of 26,000. Said Jody Frederico, manager of the popular restaurant Lillian’s: “Our business triples, if not more.” By dawn Wednesday, the town will have doubled in population and the racing season will turn into its second half with vigor regained.

Saratoga’s opening redirects the focus back to a brand of racing that befits the audience, regardless of whatever difficulties happen to afflict the game in a particular year. This summer’s inevitable early summer lull brought with it the look of winter racing and Saratoga’s inscrutable fields of raw-edged 2-year-olds, and the most compelling 24-day stakes schedule in American racing has been awaited this year with a particular sense of eagerness.

Beginning with Thursday’s Test Stakes for 3-year-old fillies and Saturday’s $250,000-added Whitney Handicap, in which Easy Goer makes his first start since winning the Belmont Stakes, and ending with the Spinaway for 2-year-old fillies on the meeting’s final afternoon, a total of nine Grade I stakes will be run at the Spa, including the $1-million Travers for 3-year-olds on Aug. 19. At least one stakes will be run on 23 of 24 racing days, and Saratoga’s prestigious stakes typically attract the best available talent in the East.

The NYRA, in the throes of attendance and handle declines since last year’s heat wave plagued Saratoga meeting, is optimistic that this month it can regain the position it enjoyed in 1987, when an daily average of 28,407 people wagered more than $3.5 million a day. “I expect a strong rebound,” NYRA president Jerry McKeon said. With decent weather and the usual good racing, there is no reason to believe our figures can’t return to the levels achieved in 1987.”

King Glorious Heads West

King Glorious, winner of the Haskell Invitational Handicap on Saturday at Monmouth Park, has been returned to California and will not challenge Easy Goer in the Travers. Instead trainer Jerry Holldendorfer said the California-bred colt who has been defeated only once in nine starts will next appear in one of three spots: The Iselin Handicap, at Monmouth, Aug. 12; the Milson Million in Toronto, Sept. 10; or a race at Louisiana Downs in advance of the Sept. 24 Super Derby. The race in Toronto and the Super Derby are both on the schedule of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Sunday Silence. Neither, however, is on Easy Goer’s current itinerary.