Marion E. Altieri - May, 2010. 

Tra-lee, tra-la!

I find myself using that expression frequently these days.  It may be that my mind is disintegrating into that child-like state to which many adults decline as they age—or it may be due to the fact that the horses are back at The Oklahoma.’

If this confuses you, either you’re new to horse racing or you haven’t yet experienced Saratoga.  ”The horses” would be Thoroughbreds, and “The Oklahoma” is the training track on the north side of Union Avenue that is not only legally part of the world renowned Saratoga Race Course—it forms fully half the mystique and majesty of the place.  Many equine photographers break their necks trying to get “the shot” of the mist as it rises The Oklahoma,  simultaneously bathing gorgeous, rippling horses with light that plays with the nuances of their faces, withers and glutes.

Ahh, the Oklahoma.  For me, it is the place that genuinely ushers in the Spring.  Most people gauge the change of the seasons by the date on which they see their first Robin Redbreast.  Downtown Saratoga merchants know that it’s racing season the night that the first Red Ferrari roars down Broadway.  But all Saratogians know that it truly is  Spring, that Racing Season is on its way—the first time we see a Sallee or Brook Ledge van roll down Union Avenue.

That first horse van, heavy with promise and Hope; flesh and bone, nickers and neighs—is the harbinger, the sign from God that, indeed, the Earth is turning on its axis and all is right with the world.  Well, at least with my world.  I need only three minutes with one horse to ooze into a state of dreamlike peace: I call horses, Valium on the Hoof.  I can practically fall asleep standing up after I’ve touched or kissed a horse.  And I’m a far-more pleasant person—I have ample witnesses who tell me this.

If a couple of minutes with one horse can transform my mind—my ability to stay conscious—imagine the effect that an entire training track full of equines has on me?  Sticking their heads out from their stalls, calling their early-morning greetings to passers-by, they are the angelic throng, itself: cherubim and seraphim, Angels and Archangels.

Cleverly, they disguise themselves as the world’s most intriguing animal, all neck and legs and hair and shine and wise eyes, they step out of Heaven and put on their equine robes long enough for us to interact with them.  The multi-eyed seraphim know that their appearance would scare the bejeebers out of the mere human heart, so they dress themselves in horsehair and hooves, and in the most-gentle of hearts, and on four strong legs.

Angels come to Saratoga every Spring, brought here not by Jacob’s Ladder or on a cloud that descends with a thud—but rather in a long, rectangular metal box with 18 wheels and 32 gears.  The box proudly reads, “Sallee” or “Brook Ledge” or any of a number of regional names.  The box brings the horses back to Saratoga—and all’s right with the world.

With those horses comes Hope, and Hope is all there is.  As a great poet, a fellow Mount Holyoke Alumna, reminded us,

“Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops, at all.”

– Emily Dickinson

Without Hope, there is no life.  With Hope, anything is possible.  With Hope, a wacky-looking little horse named Seabiscuit becomes…Seabiscuit.  With Hope in the heart, an acorn becomes a mighty oak tree, a pauper becomes a captain of industry, and a ragin’ Cajun takes everything in his heart and the talent that God gave him, and he wins the  Kentucky Derby two years in a row.

Without Hope, all is lost.

With Hope, all is possible.

The horses have come back to Oklahoma.  They are my rock stars.

Thirty years ago, I was a racing fan. But I was also a young woman with fantasies about rock stars.  Those boys and their guitars arrived in Saratoga via the mysterious, steeped-in-mythology, Rock Star Buses.  They played at SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center), then retreated to their glamorous lives in those golden chariots.

It was a few years later that I realized that the real rock stars—the ones who didn’t promise the universe and deliver nothing—didn’t ride in a purple Silver Eagle with gold trim.  No, no, the real rock stars, the ones who will love you ’til they day they die, and run their hearts out to make you happy—traveled in tractor-trailer vans, hay flying out the side windows, grooms waving to pretty girls in cars on the Northway.

One day last week I had a meeting on Case Street.  The big, bay window faced George Street, which crosses East Avenue to become Potato Chip Lane, going into the Oklahoma.

As I sat in the meeting, I was listening intently—and then I yelped.  Those with whom I met asked what was wrong with me.  I responded that I’d just seen my first Rock Star Bus of the Racing Season—my first Sallee van.  NOW it’s Spring.  NOW the horses are here.  NOW we can think about the Future, that bright, elusive place where all the good stuff happens.

The real rock stars, the stars who rock my world, are those Thoroughbreds, those mighty steeds whose ancestors, the Arabians, raced across sand dunes.  Their cousins race today.. From those Arabians, our Thoroughbreds got guts, stamina, and the craving to please their humans and to show that love with unflagging determination and focus.

These are the stars who give me Hope.  In spite of the politics of horse racing—which is screwed up on so many levels, chiefly because horses aren’t in charge—in spite of the doubts and the terrors and the fears of failure or money woes—still, I hold tremendous Hope for our sport.

I believe that horse racing in America can not only become strong—it can, once again, become America’s Pasttime. Horse racing was the most popular sport before television, computers and satellites—when fans had either to attend in person or keep their heads pressed to a radio.  I know that, with all the technology we possess currently (which changes by the second)—the sport can resurrect itself.

(If we don’t let the technology take over ["The medium IS the message," as Marshall McLuhen observed]—we can make it. When the medium, itself, becomes the message—as has become the case with social media and the addiction to it—we humans lose control over that which we created.  The created becomes the creator, and that is when the danger sets in.)

This sport can make it if all the selfish people will please go away, and all those who genuinely love the horses and the sport will take one giant step forward.  Make ourselves known.  Work together, rather than against each other. Cooperate.  Finally get that Racing Commission together. (Leroy Jolley, we need you! Who would be a better Racing Commissioner than the great Hall of Fame Trainer? No one.)

Hope springs eternal in horse racing.  As long as an $11,000 horse like Noble’s Promise can show his class and talent, and win $800,000 and change—to date!—racing has Hope.  Noble’s relatively modest breeding is actually a good thing.  His $800,000 talent is not that he’s a Storm Cat colt—it’s that he doesn’t care.  He knows he has the stuff, and he’s won almost a million dollars so far.  He was legitimately in the Kentucky Derby, because he’d earned his way there.

Hope springs eternal.  Noble’s Promise lives up to his name.

This is the sport in which Hope is often all we have. From the moment a foal takes her first tentative steps and finds Mom’s well of deliciousness, to the moment she crosses the finish line first in the Woodward—this is the sport that, every little step along the way, demands that we have a heartful of Hope.  Without Hope, we are lost.

We have barnfuls of Hope at All Play Stable.  Newborn foals; weanlings; yearlings and two-year-olds—we have beautiful horses, each with a daily commitment to Hope.  People who do horse racing may joke that they’re in it because they enjoy being broke or myriad other “horsepoor” lines, but the bottom line, the truth, is that no one gets involved in horse racing unless they absolutely adore horses, and have a heartful, a treasurechestful, a boatload—of Hope.

This is the sport that demands that we include Hope in our tack box.  Without it, no individual foal can stand on her feet, or an entire sport rally itself to secure its future.

As I drove south on the Northway after that meeting last week, hurriedly on my way to yet-another meeting, a huge horse van approached in the opposite direction.  The blue-and-white printing read, “H. James Bond Racing.”

I beeped, waved and gave the thumbs-up.  The driver probably thought I was insane.  I just had to make that contact, to thank the driver on a sunny, warm day for delivering a truckload of Spring, of Hope, of Joy to me, and for getting that precious cargo safely to the Oklahoma.

Hope.  Sometimes, it’s all we in racing have.  Always, it’s all we need.