You may consider Saratoga Race Course as a theater.
There’s the backstage space, identified in racing because the backstretch. Within the morning, well-to-do horse house owners combine with trainers, train riders and grooms as they put together for the afternoon present. Horses are washed and brushed. Excursions come by with curious followers eyeballing the entire scene.
On the opposite facet of the curtain is the racetrack, the place costly thoroughbreds race for tens of 1000’s of {dollars}, or extra, 10 occasions a day, and the grandstand, which has its personal mingling of hard-core horseplayers alongside native households on an inexpensive day trip.
Followers arrive within the early morning hours to stake out a picnic desk, whose worth soars almost to priceless by the point racing begins. On a giant day, house is at a premium, with the well-heeled and dressed-up sitting in personal bins with names like Whitney and Phipps on them and the much less lucky scrambling for a spot on the rail.
As soon as a four-week dash, Saratoga’s race assembly has grown so well-liked that it has been expanded to just about eight weeks, with the nation’s most essential summer season racing. The largest race, the Travers Stakes on Aug. 26, was gained by Arcangelo, the Belmont Stakes winner, defeating Mage, the Kentucky Derby winner, and Nationwide Treasure, the Preakness winner.
Nonetheless, the celebratory temper has been dampened by the deaths of a dozen horses, which has sparked medical reforms and consideration of a change to the observe’s floor.
The meet ends on Monday with the Hopeful Stakes, for 2-year-olds whose house owners are dreaming of subsequent 12 months’s Triple Crown and Travers.
