THERE’S the photo of my family at the far end of the racetrack apron, on a green wooden park bench on a sunny August afternoon. My brother, Joey, clenched a $2 win ticket in his hands. My sister, Sheila, in a hand-sewn sun dress, wanted to be anywhere else. My oldest sister, Michele, hovered next to me, her hand outstretched, making sure I didn’t fall off the bench while I looked through Dad’s binoculars, backward, of course. In the background of the Kodak print, Secretariat cantered to the start for the Whitney Stakes.

A few minutes later, Secretariat lost. A few months later, we lost Michele.

It’s my first memory of Saratoga. A haunting memory of a magical place. If it’s actually a memory at all, perhaps, it’s just a moment conjured from a photo stashed in a drawer of a rarely opened bureau in the living room of my parents’ house.

That was 1973.

If I had missed a Saratoga before that, no one remembers. If I missed one afterward, no one remembers.

Until now.

I still haven’t gone to Saratoga this summer. In a year of firsts, this is a first. Every time I think I should go, I stare at the mountain to be moved to get there, then hesitate and table the decision, until another week slips past. It’s the sixth week of the eight-week meet and I have gradually accepted that it will be the first Saratoga I have missed in my 50 years. Fifty years of at least a weekend at the upstate New York oasis of sport.

Tack bag

Since 1989, I have packed my car with sport coats and ties, tack bag for the first 12 of years, laptop ever since and escaped to Saratoga for the whole meet.

First, as an exercise rider in the morning and a fledging jump jockey two afternoons a week (at best). That first year, I got the phone number of a knockout Greek girl from Alabama, she ripped off the corner of a Saturday programme, scrawled her landline number. I tucked it in my pocket like a bar of gold, called her from a college dorm a few weeks later and married her 17 years later.

It took me until 1994 to get a winner at my most coveted grail. Four years later, I eked out my first Grade 1 stakes win when longshot Hokan gave me the ride of my life, back when the New York Turf Writers Cup was the featured ninth race on a 10-race card. Fans clapped from three levels of the grand old girl. I had arrived.

Two years later, I spiral fractured my right ankle when Beetleman was brought down at the last. I tried to walk on it, tried to stifle the pain, tried to ignore the realisation that it was over. A plate, seven screws and the end of the only thing I ever wanted to be, I would never ride another race at Saratoga.

Racing newspaper

The following summer, my brother and I began the odyssey of The Saratoga Special, a daily racing newspaper. Somehow, inexplicably, it has become as challenging and rewarding as riding races. I never thought that could happen.

This was meant to be our 20th anniversary celebration, a time to regale what we accomplished and relish what was being accomplished every racing day. But, alas, it’s 2020 and nothing is as planned, as hoped.

The Special’s Tom Law is in the trenches this summer. A Saratoga local, Law serves as the only full-time member of The Special team in Saratoga this summer. Upbeat, affable, positive, Law has slogged his way through 26 days of a soulless Saratoga. I can hear the slog, the fatigue in his voice.

“People ask me all the time about what it’s like and I honestly have a hard time putting it into words. I do words for a living and, knock on wood, never have a problem with so-called writer’s block, but this one has me stumped. The racing part of it all, I find either boring or dull this year, and I’ve never wanted something to be over so soon.

“At the same time, I enjoy the process of the paper more than ever, especially with all the layers and challenges we have in doing it from three locations with barely any staff and sometimes barely any interesting angles.

“Every minute, hour and day in Saratoga this year I’m reminded that it’s nothing like the place where I grew up and the place where my interest in racing was born. Mornings aren’t all that different than most years, horses go to and from the track, trainers go about their business and golf carts zip around the stable area.

Masked up

“Then come the reminders – significantly fewer horses in the barns and training every morning, and the ones that are there seemingly carry a handful of saddle towels from the biggest barns. Everyone is masked up and there are barely any other people out and about, owners, families, gamblers, tourists and wannabes – entities that individually can be tiresome but collectively help give the place great energy every day. Afternoons don’t feel like Saratoga afternoons at all, aside from horses in the paddock and the racing.

“Every day I drive to the track and walk through the gates feeling like maybe it will be different, maybe something will perk up and I’m reminded that it just won’t happen in 2020.

“Concession stands are empty, betting windows nonexistent, and disgruntled and joyous horseplayers. Television monitors are on but nobody’s watching, at least not from where they want to be. Everything else that plays a role in putting on the show – from apron benches to picnic tables, down to the wine and champagne glasses that are still sitting on the Woodford Reserve bar in the second floor of the clubhouse from closing day 2019 – sit in their place without purpose.

“Racing in Saratoga in 2020 feels a lot like that, without purpose, until performances like Swiss Skydiver, Gamine, Improbable, Starship Jubilee and Tiz The Law give another reminder, that Saratoga is still Saratoga even when it’s empty and nothing like you remember it.”

Tiz The Law dominated the Travers, winning his fourth stakes in four starts

TOM Law finishes with a line that resonates. “If it weren’t for the horses…”

Yes, it’s always about the horses.

Swiss Skydiver, a low-budget daughter of Daredevil, cruised to an Alabama win. Gamine, a high-dollar daughter of Into Mischief, rolled to an effortless Test triumph. Improbable, another Bob Baffert freight train, acted out in the gate and then galloped out in the Whitney. Starship Jubilee, somehow getting better at the age of seven, vanquished a champion in the Ballston Spa.

And, the best of all, Tiz The Law dominated the Travers, winning his fourth stakes in four starts this year. The New York-bred colt cruised comfortably in a stalking spot in the one and a quarter-mile stakes on August 8th, waited for jockey Manny Franco’s cue, more like letting go of the hand brake, and sauntered to a decimation job over six rivals. Geared down? Tiz The Law crossed the wire like he was galloping to the start.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Franco said.

For a moment, Franco seemed to be talking about a horse and a meet all at the same time.

Last summer, after the pressure of another deadline had come and gone, Joey, Tom and I opened three Vermont-brewed session IPA beers and raised them to the ceiling of our rented office on East Avenue in Saratoga.

“You know, we’ve got to be careful getting so worked up about this, so stressed out, that we don’t enjoy it. We’ve got to work hard, we’ve got to put everything into it, but we have to enjoy it.

“When it’s all said and done, we’ll look back and laugh about that newspaper we wrote all those crazy summers in Saratoga.”

Oh, for one more crazy summer in Saratoga.