Tom Law

Jimmy Toner brought his usual stable stocked with grass horses to Saratoga for the 2018 meet. Not surprisingly, as the rain-soaked meet approaches its midpoint later this week, the barn’s activity has been light with only six starters through the first 16 days. 

Midway through a tour of his TLore software list, trainer David Donk lands on a colt whose dam was part of the barn 16 years ago and thinks about what it means.

Brad Cox spends significant portions of every day on the phone, watching races on television or his iPad or meeting with a deep group of established or potential clients, the nature of the beast for a trainer with scores of horses spread out in multiple divisions.

Al Stall Jr. keeps tabs on current events by watching the news between sets, wears shorts and running shoes during training hours, proudly displays some of his children’s drawings in his office and quotes John Prine songs when the weather comes up in conversation. 

George Weaver has earned the reputation of being a Saratoga specialist over the years.

As the rain began to drizzle late Wednesday morning, Horacio De Paz walked the shedrow and inspected his horses after training. Tucked between  Christophe Clement and Shug McGaughey on the Oklahoma side, De Paz’s shedrow is immaculate, with Sagamore Racing’s red diamonds dancing over black stall guards at each stall. 

“You don’t come to Saratoga on a whim, you need to start looking at your 2-year-old crop in March and start identifying horses you can bring up here. Next year, I would send a string of horses if I had the backing.”

Calm, serene, tranquil. All adjectives that accurately describe Christophe Clement’s barn and the area surrounding it in the middle of the “Payson Park” corner just a few steps away from the Fifth Avenue gap on the Oklahoma track. In between Shug McGaughey and Bill Mott, it’s a good life.