{"id":302,"date":"2013-07-12T20:18:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T20:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.linda-rice.com\/?p=302"},"modified":"2013-07-27T20:20:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T20:20:21","slug":"saratoga-racing-figures-share-their-fondest-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/saratoga-racing-figures-share-their-fondest-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Saratoga: Racing figures share their fondest memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Saratoga Race Course celebrates its 150th anniversary, racing figures look back on their favorite memories and share what the track and city mean to them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Linda Rice, trainer<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Leading trainer in 2009 and the first woman to win a Saratoga training title<\/em><\/p>\n

Anywhere that I win races, I enjoy. Saratoga has been a special place for me for many reasons. I\u2019ve had a lot of my best victories at Saratoga: My first Grade 1 was there with Things Change in the Spinaway. City Zip won all three 2-year-old stakes there, sweeping the series, winning the Grade I Hopeful at the end of the meet. I had the \u201cLinda Rice superfecta\u201d there [in the 2008 Mechanicville Stakes], and topping everything off with the training title in 2009.<\/p>\n

Saratoga has a special place in my heart; it\u2019s my favorite place to win a race. It\u2019s got my best memories in horse racing.<\/p>\n

Angel Cordero, Hall of Fame jockey<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Nicknamed \u201cthe King of Saratoga,\u201d he was leading rider at the track 14 times<\/em><\/p>\n

Saratoga is the most prestigious meeting in our country. You get the best horses, the best crowds. They don\u2019t boo, even when you have 30,000 or 40,000 people. It\u2019s a very special place.<\/p>\n

It meant a lot when I first got there, in 1962. I was sleeping in cars and on friends\u2019 floors, but I enjoyed it, I always dreamed about going. I said to myself, \u201cOne of these days, I\u2019m going to get lucky and have a house here with a pool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winning the Travers is the most memorable thing you\u2019re going to do in Saratoga. I got lucky in 1985 picking up the mount on Chief\u2019s Crown. I\u2019d been second or third so many times, but I just couldn\u2019t win it until Chief\u2019s Crown.<\/p>\n

Tom Durkin, NYRA track announcer<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an overstatement to say that Saratoga is one of the linchpins of the entire industry. New York is itself certainly a linchpin, and Saratoga is its premier product, so I think without Saratoga as a product, you wouldn\u2019t have much of a Thoroughbred industry at all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfair to try to single out all of those great moments. I\u2019ve been on that finish line for 22 years now, and if you wanted me to limit it to 50, I could whittle it down to that, but there\u2019s no way I could limit it to one or two.<\/p>\n

H. Allen Jerkens, Hall of Fame trainer<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Leading trainer at Saratoga from 1971-1973<\/em><\/p>\n

Saratoga is special, not as much to people who have been there a lot, but I can understand how people who haven\u2019t been there before really feel good about it. I mean, I feel good about it even though I\u2019ve been going for all these years.<\/p>\n

The first time I went up there to stay, it was with three horses. My father was the trainer. We didn\u2019t have any money, but we had a horse named Otter Brook, and he pulled us out pretty good. We bought him for $2,000 and he turned out to be pretty good, my first Saratoga winner. I didn\u2019t have my own license yet.<\/p>\n

Julie Krone, Hall of Fame jockey<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For me, Saratoga was the best of everything, some of the very best of my life \u2212 finally making it in New York, competing for leading rider with Angel [Cordero] and Mikey [Smith].<\/p>\n

Saratoga is not just a race meet, it\u2019s such a mix of people really honoring summertime. You acknowledge that the days are long, and you can enjoy the lake and the parks and each other. Everyone\u2019s so convivial, and Saratoga just shows the best of everybody. Once I ended up at the racetrack in the middle of the night, and in those old wooden stands, you can feel ghosts in the grandstand. You can see horse spirits race by, and you can hear the announcer and see the hats, and you can smell the cigars and the pipes. It was just spectacular. You could feel it, a lot of presence in the emptiness.<\/p>\n

Barbara Livingston, photographer<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I chose to be a horse racing photographer due to my childhood spent at Saratoga. The racetrack\u2019s historic buildings, foggy mornings, and world-class horses \u2212 back then, the stars included Forego, Ruffian, and Alydar \u2212 sparked my lifelong passion. The best part is that every year is a new and unique moment in history. Never-ending inspiration.<\/p>\n

Jerry Bailey, Hall of Fame jockey<\/strong><\/h3>\n

All-time leading rider at Saratoga and winner of seven meet riding titles<\/em><\/p>\n

While the biggest change at Saratoga is the length of the meet, the specialness hasn\u2019t changed. It\u2019s the highest quality of racing, yet in a country fair atmosphere, and that\u2019s what makes it so special.<\/p>\n

A few races stand out to me, but one memory is actually from a weekend \u2212 in 2002, when I won the Test on You, and then won the Diana on Tate\u2019s Creek, both for Bobby Frankel. It was significant because I was trying to get the mount on Medaglia d\u2019Oro. Kent Desormeaux was riding a couple of stakes for him in California that week, and Frankel told me that whoever did better would get the mount. So not only were those races great, but they got me the mount on Medaglia d\u2019Oro, who won the Travers that year.<\/p>\n

Cecil Putnam, exercise rider<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are so many racing memories at Saratoga. Of course, watching Persistently beat Rachel Alexandra was probably the highlight, and seeing Lady\u2019s Secret race there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been going to Saratoga since 1979; I\u2019ve missed two years in that period. The racing is just so different \u2212 we used to sit on the backside and watch the races, watch the horses break from the gate. That\u2019s probably my first image of Saratoga. When it was a shorter meet, you had to jam so much into it. Now it\u2019s more leisurely. For the first 10 years, I never knew what was outside Saratoga.<\/p>\n

Marshall Cassidy, NYRA track announcer (1979-1990)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When you\u2019re in Saratoga and you go to the racetrack, you can see some extraordinary things you can\u2019t read about and you can\u2019t see if you\u2019re not there.<\/p>\n

When I think about Saratoga, I think about Fio Rito winning the Whitney Handicap in 1981. He was fractious in the gate and handled by Jim Fitzraga; he broke through the gate and dragged Jim down the track at least 100 yards. Had the fan of horse racing come to the track, that person would have seen a wonderful display of what an assistant starter can do for a race. This man held on to the horse, was dragged off his feet, regained his feet, and 100 yards in front of the gate, stopped the horse, brought him back to the gate, and re-loaded him. The horse broke well and performed very well, all because of the assistant starter.<\/p>\n

Allan Carter, National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Obviously, what\u2019s important about Saratoga is the history. The current track is 149 years old, and just think about all the horses that have raced on that track.<\/p>\n

I remember in particular the 1978 Jim Dandy with Sensitive Prince and Affirmed. It wasn\u2019t really historic at all, but Sensitive Prince, trained by Allen Jerkens, goes out to this huge lead, and you can\u2019t even see Affirmed, 20, 22 lengths behind. You think, \u201cJerkens has done it again,\u201d and somehow Affirmed won that race by about a length. I just love that race. It made me an Affirmed fan forever. I was Alydar before that, but I switched my allegiance. You love to see courage like that.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Sheppard, Hall of Fame trainer<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The leading trainer at Saratoga in 1984 and 1985, he has won a race at the track every year since 1969<\/em><\/p>\n

To me, Saratoga is the place where we showcase our sport. It embodies the epitome of excellence and tradition and all the finer things that we enjoy in horse racing. I think a win in Saratoga is equal to several wins most any place else. It\u2019s a place where you can combine work with a little bit of a social aspect, which I think is important because even though I\u2019m not a big cocktail party person, it\u2019s a place where owners chat and congregate and exchange ideas and opinions and buy and sell stallion seasons.<\/p>\n

Being leading trainer at Saratoga for two seasons in a row meant a lot to me. They weren\u2019t big numbers because it was a shorter meet in those days, but everyone zeroed in on a small number of races, and it was extremely competitive.<\/p>\n

Ogden Mills Phipps, chairman of The Jockey Club<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Saratoga is an important part of the racing landscape because it showcases the top-quality horses that are racing at the time. It is important to me because I get to see all those top-quality horses, especially the 2-year-olds who are the future stars of our sport. I\u2019ve been going to Saratoga since I was a kid. I always look forward to it, and I enjoy it immensely.<\/p>\n

Original Article –\u00a0http:\/\/www.drf.com\/news\/saratoga-racing-figures-share-their-fondest-memories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Saratoga Race Course celebrates its 150th anniversary, racing figures look back on their favorite memories and share what the track and city mean to them. Linda Rice, trainer Leading trainer in 2009 and the first woman to win a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}