Finding Saratoga
From Dream to Reality
Thirty-five years ago, I met Saratoga Race Course. A distant dream-place—glimpsed on T.V., in books, in magazines—became reality for this passionate racing fan. Due to camera malfunction, I didn’t get as many photos as I’d hoped. The ones that exist caught an old-fashioned flavor that has been partly crowded out as the 21st century grows.
So step back. Imagine having no public internet, yet. Cellular phones were large and relatively rare. Planning a trip from Medford, Massachusetts, to Saratoga Springs, New York, I relied on a printed Mobil or AAA guidebook to describe accommodations and local attractions, plus folded paper maps to chart my course. It was a kind of treasure hunt, with additional clues from weekly print issues of The Blood-Horse magazine. Looking ahead, I wrote in a spiral notebook:
Thursday, 7/25/91
I am driving to Albany a week from Monday. That’s where I can afford to stay to visit Saratoga. I’ll be spending nearly a week at the Travelodge, alone with my camera and notebook and unresolved ideas. Albany, settled by the Dutch back in the 1600s, up the Hudson, capital of the state of New York. I’ll get there in early afternoon, I hope, check into the motel, then drive 30 more miles to Saratoga Springs to get tourist information. That will be Monday, and all I’ll have to do for the rest of the week is figure out how to invest my time each day. See racing, see art, see the Racing Hall of Fame, see the select yearling sales, see the nearby state park. Saturday is the Alabama for three-year-old fillies, and I hope to see Meadow Star. If she’s there, she’ll be the first famous horse I’ll have seen more than once in person. Pictures—take lots of pictures.
Arriving well into the afternoon of that first day, I seem to remember parking at the Oklahoma training track, hiking past those quaint wooden barns, and crossing Union Avenue to the nearest entry (not the East Avenue main gate—though on subsequent days I’d arrive early and park in the Union Avenue lot). GENERAL ADMISSION $2.00 said the wooden painted sign above the turnstiles. At that time, $5.00 Clubhouse admission was an unthinkable splurge to me.
Realizing that the field was heading out for the day’s feature race, I hurried to the grandstand apron. Aiming for rail-side, I saw Thoroughbreds on parade. That evening at the Travelodge, I wrote in the spiral notebook:
