Drive anywhere near Saratoga Race Course this week and it’s not difficult to comprehend that the 2015 meeting permanently belongs to the ages.
Drive around the city and it’s even easier, many restaurants were closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and it’s a whole lot easier to navigate from one end of Broadway to the other.
The 40-day meet ended Monday, Labor Day, as it always does, or at least as it has since the 1990s. The meet opened July 24, so it took 46 days for 40 days and a total of 413 races. That’s the same number of races run in 2014 and while there were many similarities between last year and this year, there were also plenty of differences.
One big difference between 2014 and 2015 came in the form a Triple Crown winner racing at Saratoga. That hadn’t been done since 1978, which also happens to be the last time there even was a Triple Crown winner. American Pharoah didn’t get it done in the Travers – just like Affirmed didn’t, although he crossed the finish first before being disqualified – and lost to Keen Ice.
American Pharoah at Saratoga was indeed a highlight for many, namely the approximately 15,000 who turned out the Friday morning before the Travers to watch him gallop. The New York Racing Association put a cap of 50,000 on attendance for this year’s Travers and the guess is the day was pretty memorable for them, too.
The Saratoga Special published 34 issues over the course of the 40-day meeting. The editors and writers of The Special took a few days off this week – Joe and Sean to pack up and travel south and home to their families, Tom to pack up and clean out the office and the others to take in some racing without any pesky editor firing off assignments like fireworks on the 4th of July.
Every issue of The Special leads off with the popular Here & There section, which includes subsections like Worth Repeating, License Plates and By the Numbers. Since we’re a few days late – and we prefer not to regurgitate canned quotes or press release factoids – we present our own version of By the Numbers to wrap the 2015 Saratoga meet.
By the Numbers – Strictly Saratoga Special
1: College-boy fridge riding shotgun on a backstretch golf cart before the third race Monday.
1: Cable television appearances by The Special’s team in 2015. Check it out here.
2: Bottles of beer left in The Special’s fridge (not the same fridge as above) after the last deadline Saturday night.
2: Half full coffee creamers in the same fridge – one soy, one half and half.
5: Paper towels used by The Special staff (out of a super pack of 12 bought by Jack Clancy at the start of the meet).
6: Trips Tom Law made to storage unit in Wilton to drop off paper boxes, paper racks, folding tables, chairs, a bicycle and other random boxes from the office.
6: Trainer names not crossed out on the “Stable Tour possibles” list on the chalkboard of The Special’s office (an old school at 112 Spring Street). We’ll hopefully get to Steve Asmussen, Jim Bond, Mike Dilger, Bill Mott, Linda Rice and Wesley Ward in 2016.
6: Consecutive Saturdays pizza was ordered for the team from 9 Miles East (We missed the first one).
15: Empty 5-gallon water jugs (see September 6 issue of The Special for details) in The Special office.
64: Pages for Travers Day edition.
1,346: Total pages for The Saratoga Special in 2015, an average of 40 per day (Thanks to our advertisers for believing in us!)
Handicapper’s Race
John Shapazian came into Monday’s final card with a one-win lead over Gaile Fitzgerald in the race for The Saratoga Special’s top handicapper. He picked three winners – Surprise Cameo in the second, Theory Of Change in the sixth and Gap Year in the eighth. Gaile got it to within one after also picking Surprise Cameo and Gap Year, and Ironicus in the Grade 2 Bernard Baruch, but couldn’t get past the defending champ in the late double.
Shapazian finished with 108 winners from 413 races, a 26.2 percent strike rate. Gaile was second with 107 winners and a 26 percent strike rate.
Tom Law fell a win short of cracking the 100-win mark and was third with 99 (24 percent), while early leader Chad Summers finished fourth with 96 (23.2) and Charles Bedard was fifth with 88 (21.3).
By the Numbers – Meet wrap-up
4: Starts at the meet for Who’s Z Daddy, Little Mary Ellen and Pin And Win. Who’s Z Daddy was the lone winner of the group, winning Aug. 26 and finishing third Aug. 5 and Aug. 15. He also finished sixth in a claiming race Sept. 7 at Monmouth Park.
4: Horses that won two stakes at the meet – Cavorting, Unbridled Forever, Lady Shipman and Shore Runner.
8.25: Average field size in 2015, up from 7.87 last year.
10: Races forced off the turf, down significantly from 30 in 2014.
10: Races won by horses owned by Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stable and William Lawrence.
12: Races won by horses owned solely or in partnership by Michael Dubb.
17: Grade 1 stakes run at the meet, 15 on the flat and two over jumps.
24: Horses that won two races at the meet, including 19 who were 2-for-2.
34: Races won by leading trainer Todd Pletcher, three more than Chad Brown and 18 more than Bill Mott. Pletcher won his sixth straight and 12th Saratoga crown this year.
57: Races won by leading jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., four more than Javier Castellano and 12 more than John Velazquez.
211: Turf races in 2015, up from 193 last year.
413: Races run in 2015 at Saratoga.
$458: Total it took for John Panagot, former intern at The Special, to win the Huddie Saratoga handicapping contest. He won by $4.
2,893: Picnic tables reserved during the meet.
1,065,625: Total paid attendance at Saratoga reported by NYRA.
$157,647,599: On-track handle for 2015, up 4.8 percent from $150,387,443 last year. The average daily handle of $3,941,190 increased by the same percentage.
$648,272,805: Total handle for 2015, up 13.5 percent from $571,163,485 last year. The average daily total handle of $16,206,820 increased by the same percentage.
Traffic is traffic
If you couldn’t pick up a print edition of The Saratoga Special at any of our scores of distribution points this summer the place to be was ST Publishing’s website, thisishorseracing.com. Traffic numbers again show that our readers love to consume our product.
Here’s a sampling of traffic on the site from July 23, the first day we put a digital edition of The Special up, through Sept. 7, the final day of racing at Saratoga:
– Sessions (visits): 45,236, up 6.8 percent.
– Users (visitors): 20,721, up 5.6 percent.
