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Tom Law 
Take notes they said. Record or write down all the stories he tells you. When people told me that as I was growing older, I never fully understood the weight behind it.
“He’s 75, he’s forgotten more than most people in this game will ever learn,” we’d say.
And we’re back. Just like that the seven weeks of Saratoga were here and gone and with it’s closing this week marks the return of The Saturday Special presented by Pin Oak Stud.
It’s about 4:40 in the afternoon Travers Day and the field is heading from the paddock to the track for the Grade 1 Sword Dancer. I’m covering the race for The Saratoga Special and I’m fixated on the Aiden O’Brien runner Idaho.
Around every corner, tucked into a stall here and there and in barns across Nelson Avenue at the harness track are the horses trained, owned, bred and sometimes even ridden by the men and women whose names don’t get the headlines and full features in this or any publication.
It’s a Friday morning, the grass is still covered by a blanket of morning dew while the sun rises giving the grandstands of Saratoga Race Course an orange glow, and I can’t help but feel like I’m in a movie.
Last Thursday morning after training, five pigeons caused a fuss outside Ray Handal’s barn on the Oklahoma Training Track. A Handal Racing cooler hung to dry on a railing. Geese squawked overhead. Pickup trucks and golf carts zipped by. Piles of bedding poured out of stalls in the barn. In front of each stall, a Jolly Ball horse toy dangled. Hanging baskets of flowers hung from the roof.
Spring To The Sky walked out of his stall a little before 6:30 a.m. Thursday, walked a full circuit of the wood chip ring in front of trainer Bruce Brown’s barn inside Horse Haven on the Oklahoma Training Track and went about it like he’d done it hundreds of times.
The final week of racing at the 2017 Saratoga Race Course meeting gets underway Wednesday with a 10-race card topped by the $100,000 With Anticipation for 2-year-olds on the grass.
Marylou Whitney beamed in a buttercup yellow dress and matching hat, hugging the rail alongside husband John Hendrickson as they watched their homebred filly Quick Quick Quick win the fifth Sunday at Saratoga Race Course.
Todd Pletcher watched Monday’s $100,000 Better Talk Now like he watches every race at Saratoga Race Course. Wedged between assistant Tristan Barry on his left and father J.J. Pletcher on his right, he sits in his box halfway up the clubhouse in line with the finish.
