There's a particular three-digit number that serves as the framework for the 153rd opening day at Saratoga Race Course.
Six hundred and eighty-two.
Spa-loving fans should probably bet 6-8-2 in the trifecta or Pick3 because it's their numbers.
They represent how many days have passed since the bookend dates of Sept. 2, 2019, and July 15, 2021.
The first marks the last time racing fans, or folks without an owner's license, were allowed inside the Spa.
Thursday will serve as the euphoric opening day when a horrific pandemic will unofficially become part of a past that no one wants to revisit. For the first time since Labor Day 2019, fans will be able to step inside the gates of the historic racetrack and spend a magical day at the races in a picturesque Victorian setting that has maintained its charm since it opened in 1863.
After COVID-19 forced the New York Racing Association to limit attendance in 2020 to licensed owners with horses on that card who were restricted to a few designated areas of the facility, the general public—the backbone of the record attendance figures that have made Saratoga one of the most popular, if not the most popular track in the nation—can once again file into the Spa and enjoy 40 fabulous days of racing.
"This is going to be spring break for adults. I think it's going to be insane there," said owner Bob Edwards, who races as e Five Racing Thoroughbreds. "The sales will be fantastic and the racing will be super exciting. Everyone will be there."
Maybe not everyone, but close to it. In recent weeks, the countdown of days until the meet begins has been akin to rattling off the final seconds on Dec. 31. While the start of the Saratoga meet has traditionally brought out a sense of anticipation rarely seen in any sport, after 682 days emotions are at a fever pitch for Thursday's first race at 1:05 p.m. ET when directly in front of the grandstand a field of nine will break from the starting gate in a 1 1/8-mile test.
"Starting the meet with the first race at the finish line is huge," said Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce. "Just as they step on the track and then when they approach the starting gate two years of emotions will boil over. I'm sure you're going to see some tears of joy in the crowd."
With grandstand admission for Thursday's card free for people with proof of vaccination, rest assured that initial moment when the starting gates spring open for the first race of the meet there will be no shortage of people watching and video of the moment flooding social media.
"There are going to be a lot of selfies and video for that race," said Kevin Quinn, the New York Racing Association's vice president for sales and hospitality.
Given all of the excitement that will start to bubble over Thursday, unless the weather fails to cooperate, 2021 has all of the necessary ingredients for a record-breaking meet in terms of attendance and wagering.
"There's so much pent-up demand. Everywhere people want to get out and it should be a great meet," NYRA CEO and president Dave O'Rourke said. "It will be Saratoga as we know it. No one wants to relive 2020. I know it's an experience I never want to repeat."
In 2019, opening day, also on a Thursday, attracted 22,591 fans. With absence making the heart grow fonder, Thursday's turnout promises to top that figure, perhaps by a considerable margin.
"Everyone is energized and looking forward to getting back to Saratoga," Quinn said. "The amount of demand for ticketing is at a very high level and the pace of sales is unprecedented."
Aside from 40 days of racing and a package of 76 stakes worth $21.5 million at the Spa, life has also worked its way back to normal in the community of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., which has a love of horse racing unmatched in the U.S. outside of the portions of Kentucky. This summer will also mark the re-opening of concerts and shows at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Restaurants can offer outside and inside dining. The casino at the Saratoga harness racetrack will be open. Area hotels will be filled to capacity on weekends. Large crowds of visitors and city residents will stream to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame to view the sport's storied history in an ultra-modern setting or attend Breakfast at Saratoga and watch workouts in the cool air of the Adirondack Mountains. The Fasig-Tipton yearling sales that generate international attention will return to the Humphrey S. Finney Sales Pavilion across the street from the track.
There will be new group seating venues at the racetrack, including an area for tailgating, and the famed Oklahoma training track has been widened and renovated to match the surface at the main track where racing is conducted. The stakes schedule is back to normal after last year's revisions.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg for what will be happening during what should be an unforgettable summer meet.
"There's tremendous anticipation. To be able to go inside the gates this year, everyone is looking forward to that. It's not just about all the visitors coming back. We want to get back into our track ourselves," Shimkus said. "One of the saddest things was driving by there and seeing the privacy fencing around the track so people couldn't see inside the track. We couldn't go to the races, or to the Oklahoma training tracks and watch the morning works. It was all closed off to us last year."
While stopping the spread of coronavirus was a supreme challenge for much of the world last year, Saratoga County was a pocket of the Empire State where the number of victims was incredibly low.
"At one point last summer no one was in the hospital for COVID," Shimkus said. "The last COVID death, the 17th, was June 6 and we didn't have another until the end of October. We were in the single digits for positives for August. Health care professionals said it never reached here. I'd love to know if it was because of what we did or how the virus spread."
While the time NYRA spent at Saratoga last year proved to be remarkably safe, all of the energy NYRA poured into creating and monitoring protocols made it a challenge like no other at the Spa.
"We were all under so much stress," O'Rourke said. "We were racing at Belmont Park and we made a decision to go to Saratoga for the economics and other reasons. There's always a risk in that and we had innumerable protocols to follow. The concern was you're bringing an operation into a community that had quite low COVID numbers, so there's a responsibility factor and that weighed on everyone in management here. But the town worked with us, we isolated as well as we could, we tested as well as we could, we locked down the jockey colony and it worked out."
The limited number of COVID cases in Saratoga were saving graces for most local businesses.
"Shockingly downtown had very little additional vacancies. We lost some, a health club and two chain stores. With the mom and pop business we lost a few but they were replaced by other business," Shimkus said. "We were very worried last year about the impact of the pandemic on our businesses, so for us to be able to count the losses on one hand is phenomenal."
It was a much different story for the area's hotels. With people unable or unwilling to travel during the pandemic, Shimkus said the city's hotel occupancy tax was down by close to 70% from 2019. That figure played a huge role in the overall revenue from sales taxes dropping by about 17%.
Desperate to fill rooms, Saratoga hotels offered prices unseen since the 1960s. At the upscale downtown Embassy Suites by Hilton near Congress Park, rooms during Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) week sold for $99 a night.
"Rest assured you won't find a price like that this year," Shimkus said.
Indeed you will not. Prices at the same hotel are about $525 or more for those same nights.
It wasn't just fans who missed out on a year at the Spa. Some longtime New York trainers or out-of-state barns did not stable at Saratoga due to concerns with finding workers.
Chad Summers was one of the trainers who kept his stable at Belmont Park and shuttled horses back and forth to Saratoga for their races from the downstate track. After making 17 trips up and down the Northway last year to run horses or to try to make a claim, he was ecstatic about shipping his 20-horse stable to Spa last weekend.
"There's excitement for sure. Last year there was mixed with fear and nervousness and trepidation. It's just great to be at Saratoga," said Summers, who noted it has also been difficult to secure stable help this summer. "Everybody is a little bit friendlier at Saratoga. It feels different. You could walk down Broadway with a Racing Form in your hand and people won't look at you funny. You do that in Times Square and they are looking at you with sideway glances. Growing up Saratoga was our Lambeau Field. I remember coming up here with my dad and taking it all in and the first horse I took care of (Say Hey Willie) came up here and won and that hooked me. If it had been at Aqueduct, I don't know if I would have felt the same, and I would have gotten hooked on the sport like I did."
According to Martin Panza, NYRA's senior vice president of racing operations, virtually all of Saratoga's 1,830 stalls will be filled, with an additional 400 horses at the nearby harness track and about 100 at private facilities.
"The stalls are full for the meet. We're pleased with the outcome. There was pretty good demand for space and we're looking forward to a pretty good meet," he said.
Helped by the closing of the Churchill Downs backstretch this summer, a larger than normal contingent of Midwestern horsemen will be at the meet, joining forces with newcomers and trainers like Summers who stayed at Belmont last year.
Among the new faces, returnees, or trainers with an increased presence for this meet will be Karl Broberg, Norm Casse, James Chapman, Wayne Potts, Ken McPeek, Saffie Joseph Jr., Brittany Russell, Dallas Stewart, Juan Vazquez, and Brad Cox.
Cox, the Eclipse Award-winning trainer in 2020, only kept about six horses at Saratoga last year, rotating them from his Kentucky base. But he will be at the Spa with a quality string of 40 horses this summer.
"We'll be running more horses this year," Cox said. "I'm excited about it. I've been here since (July 8) and it's a great place to train. You get a little break with the weather since it's cool in the morning for the horses. It's a beautiful place to be and to race and both tracks are great. The Oklahoma track has been tighter which is great. I like what I see so far."
Cox trains Godolphin's Essential Quality , winner of the June 5 Belmont Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1). The pro tem leader of the 3-year-old division and champion 2-year-old in 2020, the homebred son of Tapit is targeting the July 31 Jim Dandy Stakes (G2) as a prep for the centerpiece of the meet, the Aug. 28 $1.25 million Travers Stakes.
"It's valuable to have a run over the track and shortening up to 1 1/8 miles (in the Jim Dandy) after the Belmont Stakes is a positive and it's a positive leading out to a 1 1/4-mile distance four weeks later (in the Travers)," said Cox, who is also targeting the Aug. 7 $1 million Whitney Stakes (G1) with Knicks Go . "The Jim Dandy will be a bridge between the Belmont and the Travers and we won't have to do much after that. He's done well on four weeks rest before."
The Travers is one of 20 grade 1 stakes that should attract a bevy of the top horses in training. Looking at the most recent edition of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association Top 10 poll, as many as eight of the horses on the list could run at the meet.
For owners, while some were able to attend races on the days when their horses ran, for many it was a strange experience with their customary seating and dining areas closed and socializing strained due to health protocols.
Edwards, who lives in Florida, became so enamored with Saratoga that he bought a home that overlooks the Oklahoma training track. He typically spends most of the summer there, attending the races with his family, visiting his horses in the morning, and meeting up with the numerous friends he has made in the industry. Yet in 2020, he was there for only a month, with two weeks spent in quarantine, and his visits to the track were infrequent and brief.
"Rolling into town this year you could feel the energy. The banners are hanging. People are walking around with a different energy," he said. "It will be nice to go to the restaurants again. It just wasn't the same last year. It was eerie. It's a super social sport and Saratoga gives us the opportunity to see people you haven't seen in a while. That's the best part of the meet."
Edwards said how many people will spend Thursday night along Broadway in downtown Saratoga will be a barometer of what to expect in terms of the crowds and electricity the meet will generate through Labor Day.
"It's just a Thursday night, but if downtown is crowded, it's going to be jammed all summer," Edwards said. "I can't wait until Thursday."
The community of Saratoga has already experienced the invigorating sensation of reuniting with a sporting event it missed during the pandemic. The town's Fourth of July road race returned to the streets of Broadway earlier this month, and Shimkus viewed it as a preview of things to come when the city's cherished Saratoga Race Course opens its gates and fans rush in.
"We had about 2,000 runners on Broadway on Sunday at 9 a.m. and it was an emotional experience to once again be a part of something we had been doing for 15 years," Shimkus said. "Imagine what it will look like when large groups of us go to racetrack for the emotional experience of seeing horse racing again in person. People have truly missed it. They are so passionate about horse racing here. It will be like a reunion for our entire community."
As it will be for anyone else who loves Saratoga.
