These are the good old days.
Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.
Read those in a singing voice and they sound a little more sensible, or something, because there will come a time where someone will look up Belmont Stakes historical records, and shout across a crowded room, “They ran the Belmont at Saratoga and not Belmont Park?!”
“Yes they did,” will come the reply from some seasoned human at a desk. “In 2024, 2025 and 2026.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“So we shouldn’t get all crazy about running the 2098 and 2099 ones there?”
“No, we shouldn’t.”
Remember all the hoopla about NYRA moving the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival to Saratoga two years ago?
The hand-wringing about using the Wilson Chute for the Metropolitan Handicap?
The inconceivability (“Inconceivable!”) of changing the Belmont distance from 1 1/2 miles to 1 1/4 miles?
The burden on local residents and businesses?
The lack of hotel rooms and the ticket prices and the cost of concessions and the complete upside-downness of it all?
The threat that NYRA would abandon Long Island entirely and run the Belmont at Saratoga forever?
And race at Saratoga through October?
I do. People went somewhat goofy over the whole thing.
I took calls and read emails about the holiness and absolute unchangeability of the race’s classic distance. No matter what, they said while banging a fist on a table or smashing the exclamation-point key, the race had to be 1 1/2 miles because otherwise it wouldn’t be the “test of champions.”
And start on the turn? Maybe from Union Avenue? Or do a lap of Clare Court, make the gap and zip on to the main track near the pony barn? No matter how hard I tried, and I tried, the jokes really didn’t fly.
Purists scoffed at the Met Mile at Saratoga. Someone asked me about extending the backstretch chute an extra furlong so the historic Grade 1 could be a true, one-turn mile like it was meant to be.
I know nothing about racetrack construction, but did my best to explain about the chain-link fence, the trees, Nelson Avenue, the parking lot at the Horseshoe Inn, city property vs. track property, all of it.
Not sure I made any headway. Still.
I heard from people who said the town would be overwhelmed by the mass hysteria.
There wasn’t enough space to hold the hordes of people who would show up. Granted, the Saratoga Belmonts did not come with the added interest of a potential Triple Crown but Saratoga Springs – as it always has – proved to be a gracious host even if that first year was a little discombobulated and traffic-choked. The jam-ups of 2024 made me think of trainer Bobby Connors’ strategy of making four rights instead of one left turn while driving in Saratoga Springs – and he said that when the meet lasted just six weeks.
But we survived.
I’m sure residents of the 12866 will breathe a big sigh and gladly go back to a 40-day meet from mid-July through Labor Day, but maybe they’ll miss Saratoga’s temporary June moments in the sun too.
I said maybe.
People are going to look back at these three years like they were the good old days the same way we look back at those 1960s races – won by Chateaugay, Quadrangle, Hail To All, Amberoid and Damascus (wow).
No pressure Dornoch, Sovereignty and whoever wins Saturday’s race, but some of those dudes are legends. By the way, those five races stayed at 1 1/2 miles by starting on the far turn but that was a different time and nobody much minded taking such risks.
People are going to laugh if they see some of the consternation, hot takes and debates that went along with the move to Saratoga.
I guess there’s a future where the new Belmont Park we get to see in September will need to be refurbished and the race will move somewhere.
How about Saratoga again? I know, I know . . .
Or maybe Finger Lakes, Batavia Downs, Tioga Downs, Vernon Downs, Genesee Valley, a state-of-art new track constructed somewhere in Westchester County or out near Montauk, The Meadowlands or Monmouth Park (now that would fire up some people)? Or maybe even some incarnation of Aqueduct (hey, people can dream).
Give it 75 years or so.
With apologies to Carly Simon and Bruce Springsteen, tell everyone it will be OK.
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