Living just a few exits away from Saratoga Springs, I guess it’s somewhat natural that I became a horse racing fan. My first racing experiences were with harness racing. My grandparents always loved to play the races, and, since this was before the days of OTB, typically placed their nightly bets with a local bookmaker. I would look through the paper and pick out doubles for them based on the names (I was probably seven or eight years old at the time). The hook was set for me when I happened to pick four or five winning doubles for them in the space of about a week, including some four figure payouts. What an easy game, eh?

As I grew older, I became more and more fascinated by the thoroughbreds. Such beautiful animals, and since racing was on national TV on a fairly regular basis back then, I was watching them long before I ever visited a race track. The first horse that I was fascinated by was Riva Ridge. What an athlete, I thought. And then along came Secretariat, and the hook was set even deeper. I was 10 years old when he won the Triple Crown. While other kids my age had posters of baseball and football players hung on there walls, there I was with a huge poster of Secretariat racing head on right at me. It stayed on my wall next to my Farrah poster and all the others through my teen years. And while Big Red set the hook deeper, it was one of the horses that he defeated that reeled me into the game for good.

Forego became my sports hero for a long, long time. They kept packing on the weight, and he kept on running. The heart, the tenacity, and the beauty all rolled into one. The image of him running down the sloppy lane to edge Honest Pleasure and win the Marlboro Cup while carrying 137 pounds is still etched in my memory. They don’t make horses like that anymore, and given the way the industry is going, I doubt that they ever will again. And I still hadn’t seen a live race yet.

I don’t really remember my first visit to Saratoga, but I do remember the first big race I saw there. The famous Affirmed-Alydar Travers. The buzz in the crowd was incredible. I had my money on Affirmed, and I still remember standing on my tiptoes trying to get a glimpse of the horses as they ran by me. I lost that bet that day, but my passion for the sport grew. These days, I’m pretty much a regular at the Spa, attending probably 20 to 25 days each meet.