All’s Right in Upstate New York When Saratoga Opens Its Season : Horse racing: It’s become a rite of summer passage. Even an overnight rain and a sloppy track can’t dampen spirits.

They came. They bet. And, as usual, most of them lost.

No matter. Saratoga Race Course was open again Friday, for the 126th time. Julie was back and all seemed right with the world--even if those pocketbooks and wallets were a little bit lighter.

Nothing, it seems, can dampen the spirits of racegoers when the New York Racing Assn. packs its 1 million pounds of equipment and moves it north to the rolling foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. Not even raging thunderstorms, which soaked the track overnight and left a thin layer of water over the sloppy surface when the horses lined up for the first race.

Not even that dreaded 3-H weather--it was hazy, hot and oh-so-humid Friday, with temperatures approaching 90.

And yet there was 81-year-old Marie Evans of nearby Fort Ann, N.Y., with her trusty lawn chair at her side.

“I left an air-conditioned house to come out here,” Evans said from her customary spot at the head of the line on Union Ave. “We’ve got to live while we can live.”

NYRA printed 25,000 programs for the earliest opening day in track history--the meet was expanded four days this year--and Arthur DeStefano of Brooklyn had one of them. He was resting easily in his wheelchair under the shade of the maple trees in the picnic area, enjoying his 14th consecutive Saratoga season.

“I’ve been playing the horses since I was 13,” said DeStefano, who suffers from polio. “I came here 30 years ago and I liked it. I used to go to Jersey, now I come up here. I want to put the money in New York. I can’t wait.”

After a quarter of a century in the shadows, track guard August Silipo finally got his moment in the spotlight. He grabbed his whistle at 11 a.m. and sounded it. The eight gates on the Union Ave. side swung open and patrons scrambled through, hell-bent on getting the best seat in the house.

“It’s the first time I got to do it,” said Silipo, 77 and a fixture here since Arts and Letters won the Travers Stakes in 1969.

An early-morning storm kept the breakfast crowd down, but maitre d’ Manny Alvarez was still smiling.

“We did more than 400,” said Alvarez, starting his 38th season at the track. “It would have been double that if it hadn’t rained, but we did good. It was nice. For a day like this, it was beautiful.”

Nearly half the field was scratched in the first race, won by Eye Catching with Jose Santos aboard. NYRA pegged attendance for the day at more than 20,000.

“I can’t tell you if there are 16,000 out there or 24,000,” NYRA president Gerard McKeon said. “But everybody’s got a big smile on their face, the women are beautifully dressed and people on the street have smiles. I think that bodes well for the rest of the meet.”

Jockey Julie Krone, who was nearly killed in a violent spill on the final day of the season here last August, was scheduled to ride in only one race Friday after 25 scratches were announced because of the wet conditions. Hundreds of fans cheered her in the paddock before the fifth race, where she finished third aboard Lil Mis Gia.

“It’s a special thing to be part of,” said Krone, who fell off a mount at Belmont Park last Saturday and bruised a knee. “I might not have a leading-rider kind of meet, but just being here makes you feel so good. Anything like that makes you feel so fulfilled and genuine. You want to thank every person individually because it makes you feel so special as an athlete.

“When they take you away on a stretcher and tell you you might never be able to ride again, you have to put your feelings in perspective. Just coming here makes me feel like the leading rider already.”