Gambling News Source:
http://timesunion.com
The cast rolls in for Spa's show
Transfer from Belmont brings horses and handlers to their homes for the Saratoga season
By TOM KEYSER, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Belmont Park stables rumble with idling tractor-trailers carrying long, sleek vans, breaking the usual serenity of hooves clip-clopping on pavement. It's Sunday, still a couple hours before sunrise, and the fleet of trucks is poised to move a community.
They crowd the narrow roads and line up one after the other. Vans transport horses every day, and racetracks open and close regularly, prompting exoduses of horses and their handlers. But this isn't one of those moving days.
Once a year in late July, the busiest weekend for moving racehorses, the leads to Saratoga Race Course, home of the country's premier thoroughbred meet. By the time racing begins Wednesday, 1,655 horses will be stabled there, most arriving in vans streaming up the Northway.
For even the top stables, such as Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey's, anticipation is peaking. No matter what they've accomplished the first half of the year, Saratoga provides a fresh start, the opportunity to compete -- and win -- at the sport's highest level.
But first, the outfits at Belmont Park on Long Island, which supply most of the Saratoga horses, must transport workers, fold-up beds, refrigerators, bicycles, equipment, horse feed and thoroughbreds worth millions of dollars along interstates to the historic track upstate. For the McGaughey barn, this means moving 26 horses and 25 workers in four 53-foot vans outfitted with small stalls.
"OK, Lena!" hollers Buzz Tenney, standing outside the McGaughey barn next to an idling truck. "Coyote!"
Tenney, McGaughey's longtime assistant, clutches paper on which McGaughey has sketched the stall assignments. One by one, Tenney calls for workers to lead out the next horse for loading.
Lena Lorieul, an exercise rider, leads out El Coyote, a promising 3-year-old filly. Her ears are pinned and her nostrils flare. She's not happy about this break in routine, about this forced eviction from familiar surroundings.
"She'll be OK," Lorieul says. "She just likes to get her knickers in a twist."
The disgruntled filly walks up the ramp and into the van. Lorieul backs her into a stall and attaches the narrow chains on either side to the filly's halter. That helps keep her steady. The truck driver places a bar across the front of the stall. That keeps her in place.
Lorieul, married to an assistant trainer and exercise rider who works for a competing trainer, is happier about the move to Saratoga.
"It's a lifestyle; it's not just a job," says Lorieul, who has rented an attic apartment in a Victorian house on Lake Avenue she'll share with her husband and 4-year-old daughter. "I get excited about Saratoga. Lots of people come to the races there. They have a good time. It's very festive."
As McGaughey's horses fill the four vans, Don Gambill, an executive with Sallee Horse Vans, one of the country's two major horse-transport companies, watches and talks on his cellphone.
Sallee has 16 vans heading from Belmont to Saratoga. Brook Ledge, the other major carrier, has 22. Gambill says he's counted 14 vans from smaller companies this morning at Belmont.
"It's like the circus leaving town," he says.
The first McGaughey van leaves at 6:04 a.m., the fourth at 7:15 a.m. Each arrives at Saratoga about four hours later.
They pull alongside a loading ramp, and the process from Belmont is reversed. One by one, the hot-walkers and grooms who accompanied the horses lead them off and into stalls. The horses bound down the ramp with ears pricked and eyes wide, checking out their new home.
"We've had a good ship," says Tenney, who followed the vans in his SUV. "The horses seem quiet and relaxed. Once in a blue moon, we have to tranquilize one. But we work on that mental aspect all year long.
"We pay a lot of attention to them, try to get them out of their stalls as often as we can. We graze them every morning and afternoon. Hopefully that affects their mental outlook and helps keep them calm."
After getting the horses situated the workers unload their personal possessions. Mark Stivers, whose main job is walking horses to warm them up before training and then to cool them down afterward, gathers his mattress, trunk, box wrapped in duct tape and bicycle.
He's worked on the track for 10, 15 years, he says. He lives for free in backstretch housing, which means at Saratoga he shares a 12-by-13-foot room with a co-worker. However, when they try to move their meager belongings in, they find that workers from another barn have left their belongings.
"It doesn't ever go smoothly," Stivers says, hauling out the discarded mattress and other items. "You get someplace, and somebody's in your room. Or it's filthy. Or you lead your horse to a stall and find a horse already there. A trainer was supposed to move it five days ago but didn't. It's always something."
But Stivers and his roommate get moved in. The horses get their hay. And by late afternoon workers are leading horses out to graze, home again at Saratoga. Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or by e-mail at tkeyser@timesunion.com.
|
|
World Casino Directory 
Gambling Forums 
