Readers Up #37: A Day at the Races
I went to Saratoga on Whitney Day, my first time at a racetrack since November 2019 (#JusticeForAqueduct); drips and reprobates abounded, along with well-dressed children, leathery grandparents, women whose hats and sneakers fought for attention. It seemed as though the sport, and the experience of it, had been captured in amber, deep-frozen and then revived, a colorful video paused and all of us hitting Play at the same time--usually on unlikely long shots. The Form looked exotic. I had to scrape the rust off. In some ways, it was daunting: far more people all in one place than I'd been among for a year and change. In others, it was familiar, long-awaited. And when I looked at my own shelves and the library stacks for an August read, it seemed only right to welcome New York racing back to life with a behind-the-scenes catalogue of the track.
A Day at the Races collects accounts of racetrack life behind the scenes, featuring first-person snippets, monologues, and diatribes from Gifford's cast of characters. Said characters range from stewards and clockers to outriders, gallop girls, and jockeys. Most of the names were unknown to me, including that of the racehorse listed in the epigraph, Sunny Day Away... but that's what makes the book both singular to itself and indicative of its larger genre. Despite annual attempts for mainstream attention, day-to-day racing is often anonymous. The horses that turn casual viewers into lifelong fans might be running at regional tracks for modest purses. The most outrageous successes catalogued in Gifford's book occur at Golden Gate and Portland Meadows, not Keeneland or Saratoga. And the complaints--directionless rages, interpersonal tiffs, petty bullshit and serious sport-wide problems--are timeless.
Peter Tunney, general manager: If you abuse the betting patron, abuse him to the degree that he's going to have less of a chance to win some money, then I think in the long run business is going to go downhill.
Theories and arguments abound as to what makes a good documentary or nonfiction book, whether the creator's voice should be present, whether a specific perspective should be privileged, if editorializing is permitted and how often. A Day at the Races reminded me in certain ways Until the Light Takes Us, a 2008 documentary about Norwegian black metal. The film was criticized and lauded for the same tendency: to present footage without commentary, leaving the viewer to draw their own conclusions from interviews, concerts, and news reports. Of course, this superficial impassivity belies all the editorial decisions that go into filmmaking. So too reads A Day at the Races. As I moved through the book, the assortment of voices presented by Gifford began to run clear; trainer Max "Prince" Milano's lengthy (and often vulgar) analysis pops against clipped assessments from owner Pete Pappas and horseshoer Bob Dupont's detail-laden blow-by-blows. Gifford never interjects, and it's not clear who edited the collection or how much finessing went into it. The overall effect is of the racetrack itself. A hive, an assortment of rituals, a secret collective... a rut.
Max Milano: You ask a doctor to fix a horse and he does whatever he does and says, yeah, the horse is fixed.
A recent Marist poll commissioned by PETA reckons that about 8% of New Yorkers visit a racetrack in a given year. NYRA's counter-argument is convincing enough, but who exactly are they trying to convince? I've been to Aqueduct on a banner day, I've been to Belmont on a random weekend, and now I've been to Saratoga in a time when people are seriously horny for something to do, anything to do. The handle and attendance of the Spa have no real relationship to whether the sport itself is in danger. The story of Readers Up so far is that accounts of Thoroughbred racing from after the turn of the 20th century agree on one point: the sport is in trouble. If there is a national glue binding racing, if there's a throughway linking each circuit to the rest, it seems to be precarity. Yet the sport is granular, fragmented, and de-regulated to the point where there's no reason to believe it couldn't die outright in one state while surviving elsewhere.
Gifford's talking heads are colorful and varied, but with the exception of some terminology, a few references to pay rate, and the fact that Lasix used to be controversial (ha), they could've been interviewed at Saratoga this past weekend. I no longer know if that's comforting or a blaring red Caution sign. In a way, professional handicapper Buddy Eldorado encapsulates the cognitive dissonance of racing neatly. When you go to the racetrack you don't go with friends or relatives, he says. No drinking, no smoke breaks, no perusing the food trucks. You should already know who you're betting, so spend no time leisurely flipping the Form over coffee. You don't swerve from your picks unless someone scratches. This is not a communal experience. There is no joy derived from the horses running, only cash flow.
Does racing want Buddy the businessman or the weekend Saratoga throng? Does a movie theater want film bros watching weekday matinees and taking notes for their podcast or families of five dropping $125 at the concession stand? Should an enterprise be all things to all people all the time when money is at stake? Buddy, by his own admission, finds the race itself dull. Buddy is uninterested in the human element. It's up to the reader to decide if that human element on display throughout the rest of the book, and the horses discussed by Gifford's cast at length--in depth, from every angle, and often lovingly--are worthy of note.
If there's something racing has that, regardless of how little your bankroll weighs after the nightcap, you cannot get elsewhere.
Yours awash in sweat under the oaks,
Diana