(First of two parts)
Good morning!
Saratoga Race Course is closed Tuesdays — “dark” in racing parlance — and without any races to handicap it was a good day to visit the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame across the street.
The brick building with white wood trim and spacious windows is on the corner of Union Avenue and Ludlow Street, where 60,000 visitors arrive annually from near and far. They sign they guest book “Albany … California … Chile” and leave messages like “Wonderful … Awesome … Cool …”
“A good half, if not more, come during the six weeks of racing,” said communications director Brien Bouyea. “Right now it’s pretty crazy with our inductions a week away.”
A sign near the reception desk promoted tours by retired track announcer Tom Durkin, whose stirring stretch calls would get railbirds’ hearts pounding and hands shaking. Such was Durkin’s popularity that The Albany Times-Union reported that Durkin was paid $440,000 to do 100 cards his final year in 2014.
Durkin’s knowledge and anecdotes are to thoroughbred fans what a tour of Cooperstown by Vin Scully would be to baseball fans. “He adds that storytelling element,” said Bouyea. “He’s a showman. He lives in town and drives here in his little blue Vespa.”
Bouyea is the executive editor of the Official Museum Guide and author of nearly every feature between its pages. Copies of his book Bare Knuckles and Saratoga Racing: The Remarkable Life of John Morrissey are on sale in the gift shop where visitors can buy a Zenyatta T-shirt for $20 on up to a Rebecca Ray tote bag for $245.
“He was a fighter, a rough-and-ready character,” said sales manager Kitty Macica, who praised Bouyea’s book for paying homage to a key figure in the 153-year history of Saratoga Race Course.
The Hall of Fame honors the sport’s builders and shakers but inside the dimly lit shrine Arkansas jockey Earlie Fires and Brooklyn-born trainer Nick Zito must defer to the four-legged rock stars that bring the crowds.
There are 204 horses from Ack Ack to War Admiral in the Hall of Fame, all with their particular brand of greatness. Winning Colors “is best remembered for her gutsy 1988 Kentucky Derby win.” Spectacular Bid cost $37,000 at auction and won 26 of his 30 races.
This year’s HoF class included a 19th century bay colt named Tom Ochiltree and two distaffers. Rachel Alexandra had 13 wins in 19 starts and beat her male counterparts in the Preakness Stakes, Haskell Invitational and Woodward Stakes.
Zenyatta won 19 straight races in come-from-behind style before losing her last by a neck in the 2010 Breeder’s Cup Classic. (She was named for the song Zenyatta Mondatta by the British rock band The Police.)
The Museum opened in 1950 to honor a legacy that began three centuries ago when three Arabian stallions were crossbred with English mares to produce the thoroughbred.
Erstwhile banker, businessman, polo player and Yale grad Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was the museum’s first president. His widow Marylou Whitney (since re-married) still comes to the track.
In the well landscaped courtyard, people admire John Skeating’s sculpture of Secretariat in mid-stride with hind hooves planted and his front legs airborne. Big Red’s surrounded by galleries that go in a clockwise timeline from pre-Civil war to the 20th Century. The Racing Day Gallery includes a jockeys’ quarters, interactive racing simulator and flashing tote board.
In the next room, the skeleton of a racehorse looms like a prehistoric beast. Visitors are gawking at a real thoroughbred named Heaton Park, who could reach 40 miles per hour after six strides out of the starting gate, “inhaling and exhaling every stride, putting 10,000-12,000 pounds of force on its fragile front cannon bones.”
Among the countless oil paintings are 11 by England’s finest horse artist, Sir Alfred J. Munnings. “We also have a great collection of works by Henry Stull, Edward Troye, Ben Marshall, Franklin B. Voss, Richard Stone Reeves, W. Smithson Broadhead, and two works by Frederic Remington,” emailed curator Victoria Tokarowski.
Without everyday artifacts, however, the Museum might reek of old money, privilege and well-heeled pedigree. It wouldn’t be horse racing’s attic; it would be aristocracy’s living room.
Fortunately there’s plenty to see beyond the gilded aura of paintings and trophies: a brass-and-wood jockey scale, the shoes worn by Nashua in his 1955 match race against Swaps, the Pimlico race program from the day Sea Biscuit ran down War Admiral.
What caught my eye was a leather horse halter. It was worn by Ruffian the day she broke down during her match race against Foolish Pleasure. Off as the 2-5 favorite in front of 50,764 onlookers at Belmont Park, railbirds strained for a glimpse of the filly on the backstretch when the track announcer exclaimed, “Ruffian has broken down! Ruffian has stopped!”
“She went 3/16ths and I felt pretty good,” said her trainer Frank Whitely Jr. “Then another quarter mile I seen her take a bad step and that was the end of it. They carried her back to her stall, there wasn’t a whole lot of hope but we tried.”
Ruffian had hurt her ankle breaking out of the starting gate but raced through the pain until she shattered the two sesamoid bones in her front leg.
Going into the race she was considered a perfectly bred thoroughbred in an imperfect world. She had size, speed and stamina and had won all 10 of her starts. Her HoF plaque reads in part: “(Her) speed and beauty caused many to demand that she face the best males and an equine battle of the sexes was arranged.”
It was a tragic decision, and the text alongside Ruffian’s halter reflects that sentiment. Written by Cary Robertson of the Thoroughbred Record a week afterward, he minced no words: “Bred to be massive, fast and endowed with a savagery which would drive her to fight pain and humble her foes … Our vanity and finally her own savagery destroyed her.”
The Museum and Hall of Fame are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Labor Day, then five days a week through Dec. 31. Admission is $7 for adults, $5.50 for children and $5 for senior citizens over 55.
Afterward, go across and bet the races — you might be putting your money on a future Hall of Famer.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.