Joe Drape must be the new sports editor, or deputy editor of the sports page. There has been a tremendous amount of horse racing coverage lately, albeit about the drugs, suspensions, breakdowns and euthanasias of the effected horse who can't be made whole again. Not fun to read, but a vast part of what the game has become.
I'm writing this in the morning, before the Belmont activities have started. My oldest daughter got married on the day Smarty Jones lost in the shadow of the wire to Birdstone. We listened to the race on the car radio as we got to the catering hall in the Bronx—Snuff Mill in the Bronx Botanical Gardens. There was no TV inside.
I have many memories of Belmont Day. By second daughter got married on the Friday before Justify's Triple Crown in 2018. I was there for all the Triple Crown winners in the 70s.
Secretariat's Belmont Day weather was a lot like today. A pleasant June Saturday. My friend Dave and I were die-hard racetrackers at the time, got to the track when the doors opened. Dave is the Dave in Fourstardave, nicknamed by his boss Richard Bomze at Winning Points for his number of stars awarded to his picks for college football games. Dave passed away in February 2021.
We got there by the first LIRR train to arrive at Belmont, raced to the last section of the third floor, and secured three seats by taping sections of the Morning Telegraph to our seats—the universal sign to others that the seat is taken. We were saving the third seat for our mentor Les, Mr. Pace, an older guy who was in love with Citation. who he saw decades ago.
In that era, NYRA saw fit to keep at least one section open to non-reserved seat tickets holders. Now, they reserve out the whole place, and I suspect make people buy tickets for Friday's card as well, bundling the two dates into one exorbitant price.
No one goes to Friday's card, but NYRA is keen to tell you it's part of their "Festival." Earlier last month they put an ad out for 700 people to be hired for the three days to have various jobs around the stands, even being mutuel clerks, to handle their delusional expectations that there will be a crowd.
They missed this year of making it a three day festival because of cancelling racing on Thursday due to poor air quality due to the Canadian forest fires. Ironically, Wednesday was the worst day of the smoke and haze, and there was no racing scheduled for Wednesday. They could have run Thursday, but cancelled early in the day. Oh well.
My first day at the races was Belmont Day in 1968 with Dave and his brother Dennis. We tried to keep it a tradition, but Dennis soon developed other interests, and left it to Dave and I. Dave and I were going to be there on a Saturday anyway, so Belmont Day was just one more day with a lot more people.
I kept a length of masking tape wrapped around a stubby pencil to secure seats. We did this whenever we went to the races. Eventually NYRA saw fit to make the whole place a reserved seat and we stopped going on Belmont Day. The last Belmont Day I attended was in 1999 when Lemon Drop Kid won. I had ordered reserved seats that put Dave, myself, Johnny M. and Jose B. on the third floor of the grandstand. We had so much trouble leaving the track by car then that we didn't arrive back in Wantagh, less than 10 miles away, until 8:30 that night. They had no one directing traffic. NYRA's problems with crowds are part of their pattern. I never went to another Belmont after that.
In 2003 I went to Belmont on the Friday before Funny Cide was going to try for the Triple Crown. I wanted to get a feel for the place. When I got there, expecting to grab a seat because no one was there. I found NYRA had reserved every seat in the place as part of their two-day ticket package for the Belmont. I couldn't get a seat. Rows and rows of empty seats, ushers attending to empty aisles and I wasn't allowed to sit down anywhere.
I threw a fit. Think George Brett storming out of the dugout when his home run was erased. I was pointed to customer service. I wasn't much calmer by then, but they did give me a reserved seat in the grandstand for the day. In those days you paid $5 for clubhouse, which I had, and $2 for the grandstand.
So now I've got a seat, but in the $2 section. I don't remember if I eventually got a $3 refund. Such was NYRA. Soon after, whenever I went to Belmont I would see a sign that made the claim that admission didn't mean you had a seat. I like to think I was responsible for NYRA now covering their ass with their no seat guarantee policy. I don't think I've seen the sign lately, but then again, I barely go but maybe twice a year to Belmont, and only on a day when there are more horses stabled than there are people in the stands, like last Saturday.
Fifty years is a long time ago. And I'm not going to say it seems like yesterday. A lot of water has gone under that bridge, and there are many people who I knew then, family included, who are no longer with us.
It's days like this I miss Fourstardave. I miss Les, who wouldn't even take the seat we saved for him because he felt Citation's Triple Crown achievement was going to eclipsed. Three magazine, Time, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek all had Secretariat on their covers a week before the race. Les left before Secretariat even went to the post. Citation was a great horse, and 16 wins in a row is a Joe DiMaggio-type record, like Woody Stevens winning five Belmonts in a row in the '80s. I was there for all those, and cashed some tickets on Woody's winner. Not all, but a few.
I keep a framed page from the Racing Form that shows the past performances of all five of Woody's winners as they stood before the Belmont.
My friend and I were standing on our seats. I was pounding on his shoulders to "look at the time, look at the time." Secretariat's owner Penny Tweedy was frightfully concerned that Turcotte was going too fast. He couldn't last. He did of course.
Tom Durkin, the long-time NYRA track announcer who came along after Secretariat suggested a pole be installed along the stretch that is in the position of where the second place horse was when Secretariat hit the wire. It is nearly a 1/16th of a mile from the finish. It's called Secretariat's pole, trimmed in Meadow Stable's blue and white colors.
Bob Coglianese recently passed away at 88. His son Adam is now the official track photographer. Adam is quoted in today's NYT piece that it's "dumb luck" to get a phot as good as the one snapped by his father, or his assistants, shooting one frame at a time. That photo is still on sale, particularly when you go to Saratoga.
I don't think it's luck, I've watched the photographers set up prior to a big race, taping their cameras at ground level to posts on the rail; climbing up on portable stands like scaffolding to get an unobstructive view of the finish. Luck is the residue of design.
Adam tells Melissa Hoppert in the story that he might position 20 photographers on a big day like the Belmont. There is one photo I bought in Saratoga of Secretariat rounding the turn into the stretch, way ahead of the second place horse, with no crowd, or stands in the photo. He looks like he was captured at a workout. It's a picture like none other of that day.
I asked Adam about the unique photo of Secretariat photo rounding the turn into the stretch. He thinks one of his father's friends took the photo. Not dumb luck. Being in the right place to record what became horse racing history.
Johnny M. is coming over today to watch the Belmont. I don't even bother to get the past performances for a day I'm not going to the races. I'll make some small wagers on the Belmont, win and a variety of exacta combinations, but nothing totaling any kind of money. The thumbnail sketches that appear in the paper are good enough to make informed decisions.
So, who will I go on record for? A flyer on Arcangelo to win, based on a win over the track, always important. Some exacta combinations, boxes with some Pletcher runners, Tapit Trice or Tapit Shoes, along with something from Brad Cox Angel of Empire.
By the looks of things, there don't appear to be many backs in those seats when you can see the stands today. They might be headed for just about a crowd of 50,000; maybe not even that.
Since that photo was taken NYRA made a big deal of rebronzing the statue to make the coloring more like the chestnut that Secretariat was. To me, I think they failed. He looks more orange than chestnut, somewhat like the air on Wednesday. Oh well.
It was interesting to note that when they showed a replay of Secretariat's Belmont they said they went to the post at 5:38. Not so these days. A little after 7:00, but with plenty of daylight left as the gates popped open.
And what happened? Well, you can still make history even if the final time is 2:29 and change, more than 5 seconds slower than Secretariat's unworldly romp around Big Sandy. Arcangelo, a well-bred ridgeling won the race with Javier Castellano aboard. Castellano won the Derby with Mage, and now has checked off a victory in each of the Triple Crown races in his career..
Can a ridgeling still sire a horse? Yes, but like any horse, they need to be checked for testicular ability to impregnate. When Woody Stevens won a Belmont with Creme Fraiche in 1985 the sire news wasn't so good. Creme Fraiche was a gelding. No go in the breeding shed.
Race charts can be a dry read. They don't divulge the history behind the victory. Arcangelo's breeding screams distance. The sire is Arrogate, with a Tapit mare Modeling. He won by 1½ lengths. The chart tells us how Javier saved ground all the way around after tucking in from the three path on the backstretch.
After Forte and Tapit Trice, there was a dead heat for fourth with Hit Show and Angel of Empire. That produced two Superfectas. Something for everyone.
Trainers names are always listed in the chart. In this case Jena Antonucci, the first woman trainer to win a Triple Crown race. Ms. Antonucci runs a small stable with not many starters, but a decent winning percentage.
Arcangelo won a race over the track prior to the Belmont, the so-called Peter Pan stakes, a mile and an eighth around Belmont, which makes it a one-turn race.
The Peter Pan is not known to be a great prep for the Belmont, but handicappers always think more of a horse when they have a win over the track. The NYT racing writer Joe Drape thought enough of it to make Arcangelo his top pick. If you followed Joe, you cashed. As did Johnny D. and Johnny M. in Johnny D's living room. A nice payout with no overhead: no admission charges, no parking charges, no cost of the Racing Form. Absolutely pure profit. It should happen more often.
But the human story belongs to Ms. Antonucci, a Florida-based trainer who has been around horses since she was three, being plopped on top of one by her parents to ride show horses. People in this game are a bit like Jesus. They've been born in a stable.
Ms. Antonucci was a guest of Greg Wolfe earlier in he day on a FS1/2 broadcast. There was so much racing coverage that you missed nothing with network and cable Fox coverage. It was a prescient interview. Her chances before the race were good, and proved even better when Javier was saving all that ground.
Through the power of Twitter it was posted by @AcaciaClement, a Fox presenter, Ms. Antonucci's viewing of the race from the boxes. To me, it's rather amazing that a trainer would watch the race unfold by watching the earlier parts of it on the TV monitor in the boxes. No binoculars.
It's a one-minute clip that builds in intensity as Ms. Antonucci and the owner and a few others are realizing there is a chance Javier and Arcangelo are going to succeed. As the horses are in the stretch and Arcangelo looks to be clearly in the lead, Ms. Antonucci peels away from the TV and watches directly.
I can only say her reaction to the race might remind some of Med Ryan in a deli with Billy Crystal. Ms. Antonucci fairly collapses with joy as Arcangelo crosses the wire first. She wasn't the only one so excited.
Hopefully, the announced crowd of a little over 48,000 left as happy as Jena Antonucci the trainer, Jon Ebbert, the owner, and Javier Castellano the jockey. Also hopefully, the crowd got out of the place before midnight. The first 10,000 admitted got a reprint of the 1973 Belmont Day program. I still can't find mine, although I've got lots of other programs. I would always buy one, even if I knew the numbers for the entries. But, in a NYRA move they made the program $4 because they contain a few lines of a past performance for each horse. It's worthless to any serious handicapper. I no longer buy a program that once upon a time was 25¢. I stopped when it was $3.
By the looks of the crowd, there were still a significant number of empty reserved seats. The apron was crowded, telling me the crowd was a general admission crowd that decided to come out when the weather was so inviting. No seats for general admission.
The card was a typical stakes filled one with six Grade 1 races and three other stake races, 9 in all. Back when the Christopher Kay was running the show it was decided to cluster as many stake races as they could on certain days. The effect of this pulled stake races away from their traditional dates, notably the Metropolitan Mile that was always on Memorial Day. No more. This of course strips stake races from days that would ordinarily hold them, leaving a surfeit of maiden races for the rest of us who actually play more than once a year. Thanks Chris.
Christopher Kay was ousted when it was revealed be was having NYRA staff rake his leaves when he was in Saratoga. Sometimes the right things happen to bad people.
I wonder how many people realized the story behind the Met Mile winner Cody's Wish, a horse for the ages. He must have heard race caller Tom Durkin say he was "languishing" in the back just before he unleaded a kick that rocketed him to the lead to finish the mile in 1:34 2/5 as the 3/5 favorite, winning by 3¼ lengths. It was his fourth straight victory for last year's Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile winner.
Cody's Wish is named for a severely handicapped young man who picked the horse out as part of Kenneland's Make-A-Wish program. Cody has been in the winner's circle before with the horse, but he didn't make the trip this time. His father was there, filled with emotion as he was interviewed by Acacia Clement. You couldn't know all this and still have a dry eye.
So, will any of the 48,000 be back? I'm sure some already make it at least a tradition to attend Belmont Days. Will they become horseplayers? Not too sure about that. People were holding more cell phone than Racing Forms yesterday, but at least they came.
http://www.onoffram.bloftpsot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment