Drawing from a market of millions, Belmont Park’s final afternoon of live racing this summer - the last one on Long Island until early September - drew a crowd of 5,976 Sunday.
Drawing from Saratoga Springs, a city of 25,000, Saratoga Race Course’s Open House, which featured four steeplechase races without wagering, drew an estimated 10,000 Sunday, five days before Saratoga opens its 40-day meet.
The Open House crowd included hundreds of families taking advantage of a beautiful afternoon where everything was free: admission, parking, backstretch tours, handicapping seminars, pony rides and dozens of other rides. The fans were also free to sit wherever they wanted, including the clubhouse boxes. All concession stands are run by charities.“It’s just a very nice thing,” Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard said. “I think it’s fun for the public. You can sit in Ogden Phipps’ box.”
Sheppard might have had a tiny bit more fun himself had his horse in the first steeplechase race, Sergeant Karakorum, not lost by a neck to Jimtown. Even so, Sheppard seemed mighty relaxed after announcer Marshall Cassidy told the crowd which horse had won the photo. “Normally, I get a tightness in my stomach when I walk into the Saratoga paddock,” Sheppard said. “Today, I was relaxed.”
Why other tracks don’t offer an Open House is a mystery. Saratoga has had one for more than 30 years, and it continually outdraws the live cards run at Belmont Park the same afternoon. There is a reason. Saratoga’s racing season, which was 24 days for decades, has ballooned to 40. But even so, that’s only a month and a half. For 10 ½ months, Saratoga is dark. And people miss racing. Remember when racing wasn’t year-round? When it had a season, like other sports?
But that’s only one of the reasons for Saratoga’s smashing success. Demographics at Saratoga are markedly different than at other tracks, including the New York Racing Association’s other two facilities, Belmont Park and Aqueduct. At Saratoga, virtually half of the crowd is female. There is also an inordinate number of families, maybe many of the same ones who visit Open House to get into the mood.
Watching the faces of kids watching a steeplechase race was a show in its own. Their mouths opened wide as they literally watched Thoroughbreds fly through the air. When that first steeplechase race resulted in a photo finish, the excitement was palpable, even without a single dollar wagered.
How many of those kids attending Open House grow up to be fans, maybe even fans for life?
The bottom line is that Saratoga gets it right, even before Opening Day.
*********************
(Eclipse-Award winning author Bill Heller’s latest two books, “Above It All,” a biography of Hall of Fame jockey Jose Santos, and “Captain Free-lance; The Check Is In The Mail,” are available at www.billhellerbooks.com. Bill is doing a book signing for “Above It All at the Hall of Fame on Opening Day, Friday, from 10 a.m. to noon.)