Sean Clancy

Owning horses goes something like this…

You buy or breed the horse. Lift off. There’s a rush around that. Making a deal, creating a life. You get to name him. Design your silks. Dream the dream. All the world is young, the horizon unreachable, the freedom of expectation. You are in the game.

Chip Miller hopped off his 3-speed Red Hot bicycle at the East Avenue Café, swinging his right leg back and across like he had done three thousand times before, snapping the white pole in half, like a chopstick, the bottom part wangling back and forth behind the back tire, the other half, the one with the florescent orange flag flew halfway across Lake Avenue and laid in the street like a dead bird. I laughed, pointing at the flag. Chip walked over to my bike, a girl’s Schwinn borrowed from a garage, and snapped my flag in half, throwing the top half like a Frisbee.

Boyd Browning Jr. looked at The Saratoga Special display case in the front of the old feed store on East Avenue and smiled at the copy of Recollections of a Life with Horses, by Humphrey S. Finney.

Fasig-Tipton’s president reads the book from time to time, just as a refresher, just as a reminder of Finney, the man they named the pavilion for and for whom we owe pretty much everything that happens in the next two days.

The world didn’t end, I didn’t get hit by lightning, I didn’t blow the turn and wind up at Siro’s. Despite the byline, “In the Paddock, by Tom Law,” I wrote yesterday’s column in the spot. It was about Eddie Arcaro’s son, Bobby. Never fear, the Cup of Coffee streak, going back to Wednesday, July 25, 2001, is still intact. We rolled past 500 last summer, next stop, 1,000.

Look out, Cal Ripken.

Eddie Arcaro walked around the house, counting to 12. He drove his car, counting to 12. He walked to the jocks’ room, counting to 12. He walked out of the jocks’ room counting to 12. Never 11. Never 13. Always 12.

“If you can go an eighth of a mile in 12, you know the time of the race. It’s your barometer,” Arcaro would say. “If you know how fast you’re going for that eighth, you got it. No one has to tell you. If you do it often enough, it becomes an automatic. By the way, if you go enough 12s in the mile, you go in 1:36 and you just win the race.”

“Who is that chestnut horse?”

Nobody answered.

The chestnut horse free-wheeled around the shedrow at Lizzie Merryman’s barn at Fair Hill Training Center for the second time – big, scopey, long head, free-walking, a natural sequence of momentum and verve. Jockey/exercise rider Billy Hollick sat still as a sprinkle on a doughnut, long leg, bracing against a horse who naturally walked too fast.

Tyler Gaffalione walked back to the jocks’ room after finishing second in Wednesday’s fifth. He was the happiest second-place jockey all meet.

“It’s a dream come true,” the 22-year-old said. “The nostalgia, you can just feel it here, as you’re walking on the grounds, you just think about all the great riders, the great horses and the great trainers who have been here, to be here on any day is amazing.”

I was going to write a story about Melissa Cohen, assistant trainer for Rick Violette, winner of the Godolphin Industry Award last year. I was going to meet Cohen at the barn and spend a day with her. I asked her what time to meet her. She said, “4:30…4:35.” I set my alarm for 4:00 several mornings. Setting an alarm and abiding by an alarm are two different things. I did not meet Cohen at the barn at 4:30.