Day after day, week after week Saratoga attracts what few racing meets do: a big crowd every day. Arguably the most popular racing meet in the country, Saratoga appeals the casual fan and the serious gambler, to families and crowds of friends out for a day of socializing and gambling. Though little of Saratoga remains…
On Sunday afternoon, Atlantic City Race Course broke a 37-year attendance record when 13,528 people showed up for its six-race card at the little track in Mays Landing, New Jersey. If by “boutique meet,” you mean short, then Atlantic City is the most boutique of the boutiques, racing for only six days every year.…
Call me “the woman who left Keeneland to drive to Charles Town.” It’s true, even if no one would believe it. Charles Town Races sits in the Blue Ridge Mountains, roughly equidistant, a 90-minute car trip, from both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It’s been around since 1933, and visitors walking through the facility will see…
It’s a few minutes past 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning in Lexington, Kentucky; it’s still pretty much dark out, and the temperature is a few ticks north of 40 degrees. But it’s opening weekend at Keeneland Race Course, and the ground floor of the grandstand is bustling. The horses have been on the track…
Ah, holiday weekends! Not sure what the justification is behind making Columbus Day a major holiday, but given the chance at a three-day weekend…I’ll take it. As usual, I spent Saturday at Belmont, where there were three Grade 1 races on tap: the Jamaica, the Frizette, and the Champagne. On Sunday I headed for points…
In January of 2007, I went to Philadelphia Park for the first time. I don’t recall that it was particularly cold, but it was gray, and the place had a desolate feel. We sat in the restaurant on the fifth floor; it was perfectly pleasant, but the horses seemed awfully far away: it was tough…
I lived in the mid-Atlantic for seven years, and I logged more hours than I care to remember on I-95, making my way home to friends and family in New York and Saratoga. When I left the area in 1995, I vowed I’d never again live anywhere that required regular travel on 95. I was…
I have documented at length my enjoyment of Gulfstream Park. No, I wasn’t at the old Gulfstream, and no, I am not a Stronach/Magna fan, and yes, I agree that there are too few seats…but on your average racing day, I find Gulfstream a pretty pleasant place to spend a day at the races. Saturday,…
I came to racing too late to make it to Hialeah to see Thoroughbreds; the shuttered track has been presented to me as a Shangri-La, the epitome of all that was good and right and beautiful about racing. I mourned that I never got to see it. But I lucked out: Hialeah would be open…
Regular readers might accuse me of never having met a racetrack I didn’t like: I’ve gushed over Gulfstream, swooned over Suffolk, waxed rhapsodic over Woodbine. In my own defense, I am occasionally discriminating: I’d be happy never to return to Philadelphia Park, and while willing to admit that I caught Turfway on a bad day,…
Brooklyn Backstretch 