Saratoga Race Track Is a Real Crowd-Pleaser

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. —  Even to people who never have seen the place, Saratoga must seem a phenomenon. In an era when race-track attendance is declining almost everywhere, nothing can stop people from flocking here.

The weather has been miserable all month and the quality of racing subpar, by Saratoga’s usual lofty standards. The New York Racing Assn. has siphoned some bettors away from the track by simulcasting the races to various downstate outlets and even to a theater in nearby Albany. It hasn’t mattered.

When the third week of the traditional four-week season ended last month, Saratoga’s average daily attendance was 25,992. Only Santa Anita, which draws from the populous Southern California area, does bigger business--and not by much. Every race-track executive in America would like to bottle Saratoga’s formula and take it home.

The amazing part of Saratoga’s boom is that it is such a recent phenomenon. The track was built in 1864, and its beauty and charms long have been celebrated, but little more than a decade ago, the weekday crowds were frequently counted in four digits. People who loved Saratoga worried perennially that it would be shut down because it didn’t generate the business of the downstate tracks. Then, in the mid-1970s, Saratoga was “discovered.”

Harvey Pack of the New York Racing Association offers this theory for the boom: “This is one of the best areas to go on vacation in the northeast--you’ve got Lake George, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the ballet and concerts. Around the time of the gas shortage, people started coming here in great numbers, and the track has grown in proportion to the whole area. Plus, Off-Track Betting has helped us a lot. People got interested in racing by betting OTB, and now they can’t wait to go to a track.”

When the masses started to arrive, the management of Saratoga was wise enough to try to find ways to accommodate them in this ancient facility--to the extent that the whole character of the place was gradually changed.

For much of its history, Saratoga was known as a haven for the sport’s elite. This was the place where Whitneys and Vanderbilts spent their August afternoons--not families with picnic baskets. But when the families started coming, the grounds of the track were expanded into a vast park. Take a walk around the paddock area and you’ll encounter a small combo playing jazz, an outdoor cafe, a wine and cheese tent, dozens of picnic tables under the elm trees, with television monitors and betting windows nearby. And yet there is no tawdry, honky-tonk atmosphere.

“Everything we’ve done,” said NYRA Vice President Mark Costello, “is designed to blend in with the race track’s original look. Saratoga’s historical flavor is unchanged.”

Saratoga has managed to cater effectively to three very different groups of customers--the casual fans who come for picnics and fun, the society folks who show their finery in the clubhouse boxes or the terrace dining area, and the hard-core horseplayers who are the bedrock of any track’s business. Although the grandstand can become uncomfortably overcrowded at times, these groups manage to co-exist amicably.

The genial, relaxed atmosphere of Saratoga is most evident when the ninth race has been run and the crowd is dispersing. At almost any other track, people show varying degrees of disgruntlement as they stomp toward the exits. Here they leave leisurely and, for the most part, they look happy and content. It is a rare race track indeed that can be said to contribute to its patrons’ peace of mind.