Friday, September 4, 2009

A Day at the Races, a Night on the Camp Grounds


I’m off to the races tomorrow, to Saratoga Springs, New York. I don’t follow the sport, but my travels are taking me to the Amtrak station in Saratoga, and so I’m just popping over to see the time-honored end of the season at the track. It seems I’m stumbling into a piece of racing history. A horse name Rachel Alexander may go into the record books:

“What a gal!

She’s soundly beaten the boys (twice), completely overwhelmed her peers, and Saturday at Saratoga Race Course, 3-year-old Rachel Alexandra lines up against the older fellas for the first time as she looks to re-write racing history yet again and stake her claim to Horse of the Year honors in the Grade 1, $750,000 Woodward Stakes.

The Brooklyn Bridge had only been open a few years and Grover Cleveland was president of the United States when Lady Primrose won the 1887 Manhattan, then a 1¼-mile race on dirt, as the last 3-year-old filly to beat older males in a Grade 1 dirt route race in New York.”


The stop is enroute to a weekend at Brandt Lake in the Adirondacks. Friends got married here 5 years ago, and the lakeside gourmet cookout and midnight bonfires were so fabulous that we’re all getting together again for the food!

Labor Day is so late this year that it feels like it will be October when I go back to work next week. It’s autumn in New York; it’s good to live it again.

2 comments:

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