Saratoga 2018 #5

American Tycoonery

Quick hits for a quick start to week two —

Duncan Taylor’s short history of Saratoga is pretty on point: “It’s the history of America’s wealthy, migrating before air conditioning to upstate New York to find comfort in the summer, bringing their best horses to compete against each other.”

The summer I was a hotwalker at Saratoga, there was a mare I’d take out to graze who enjoyed snuffling in the weeds. She’d seek out a kind of crabgrass, her lips delicately separating its blades from surrounding plants, and then, with her teeth, give a little yank to get some of the root. We’d spend most of our 15 minutes like this, with her happily nibbling her way across Clare Court. Some mornings, though, her owner would visit and call me to walk her over to a patch in front of the barn where the grass grew thick and strong. She’d put her head down, snort, and give me her Let’s go tug. I’d tug back, Stay put. Neither of us were pleased. But her owner would beam at this vision, his beautiful mare glinting in the sun with her nose buried in a bouquet of green.

I think about this guy, and the tableau he liked to arrange us into, at least once a week.

RIP Handycapper. You were too good for this game.

What? Talking about Joe Palmer last week led to an email from a friend sharing some of their favorite bits and some lines that haven’t aged well. “The population was predominantly male, because, of course, female horseplayers do not go to heaven,” Palmer wrote in the essay “Not Under Oath,” collected in “This Was Racing.” So, where do female horseplayers go, my friend jokingly asked. I think the answer is obvious — to hell, where they’re forced to participate in a hat contest and sit through a tutorial on reading past performances.

See you Thursday.

— Jessica (@railbird)