Legendary sportswriter Red Smith once wrote: \u201cFrom New York City you drive north for about 175 miles, turn left on Union Avenue and go back 100 years.\u201d Simple directions to the Saratoga Race Course.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s probably one of the best venues for racing there is in the entire country, maybe the world, for that matter,\u201d said Bill Mott, a thoroughbred trainer.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the oldest sports venues in the United States. Built during the Civil War, the place is filled with history beyond just horse racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you’re a horse racing fan, this is Mecca with all the history and the quality of the races here,\u201d said Tom Durkin, a former track announcer at Saratoga. \u201cThe atmosphere is unlike any other racetrack in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story of Saratoga started across the street in 1863. The first four-day meet was organized by John Morrissey, next to what is now the Oklahoma training track. It attracted 5,000 fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so successful that they built a racetrack across the street in 1864, and it was a big hit right after that,\u201d Durkin said.<\/p>\n
As the popularity of Saratoga grew over the next 163 years, so did the number of days. The meet jumped to 24 days in 1962, then 30 days in 1991, 40 days in 2010, and this year a record 51 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe town was a big resort with gambling prior to the Saratoga Race Course, and then the race course just became, over the years, the greatest race course in America,\u201d Durkin said.<\/p>\n
Over the decades, it\u2019s earned the nickname “The Graveyard of Champions.” Upsets included the 1919 Sanford Stakes, when a horse named Upset beat then-undefeated Man-O-War. Many believe this is where the word \u201cupset\u201d entered the American sports lexicon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is unique in the professional sports entertainment world in that it’s an authentic Victorian building, for starters, and there’s a tradition here,\u201d Durkin said.<\/p>\n
The course has a tradition of drawing the best horses in the country to upstate New York \u2014 thoroughbred Triple Crown winners like Secretariat, Seattle Slew and American Pharaoh. The venue allows visitors to have a close encounter with these athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe horses actually walk right through the crowd to get to the paddock,\u201d Durkin said. \u201cIf you could, you could almost reach out and touch them. You can see the spirit in their eyes and the muscle and sinew and their attitudes and really up close.\u201d<\/p>\n
From its quiet begin to recently being the temporary home of the Belmont Stakes, Saratoga has seen it all. It’s a place that hasn\u2019t changed much over the last century, and that\u2019s just the direction horse racing fans want.<\/p>\n
The summer racing season at the Saratoga Race Course begins Friday with the July 4 Racing Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary sportswriter Red Smith once wrote: \u201cFrom New York City you drive north for about 175 miles, turn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,33453,11101,96983,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,319,200],"class_list":["post-285265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-america-250","tag-app-sports","tag-jackson-wang","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}