Attracting new fans to horse racing – and keeping existing ones – is one of the sport’s biggest challenges. I started thinking about this more when I reported on the attendance at this year’s Saratoga meet. Despite heavy promotion of the Saratoga 150 celebration and summer weather that was as close to perfect as we are ever going to see, attendance for this year was down almost four per cent below that of last year.
Most discussions about increasing interest in the sport center on the role of drugs. While I do not discount the significance of that as a potential impediment, I am more interested for the moment in how you got into racing. Perhaps a more difficult question is why you got hooked. At the end, I will describe how you can respond to this question (with your privacy guaranteed). But first, here is my story.
Growing up, my only contact with racing was being in the house when my father was watching one of the Triple Crown races. He was not a racing fan and I suspect he was watching because of the limited menu of sports on TV. I have a distinct recollection – for reasons that escape me – of Tim Tam’s Derby. It may have been the name, or perhaps the call of Fred Capossela.
Other than watching the occasional Triple Crown race, I had no interest in racing until the woman with whom I was living got tickets for the Kentucky Derby. She had watched the Derby the previous year with another man and they decided to each write for tickets. When she got them, he was no longer in the picture, and we decided that even though we were buying a house, how could we miss the “greatest two minutes in sport?”
When we arrived in Kentucky that year, we heard that Churchill Downs actually ran races on days other than the first Saturday in May, and went to the track. Kentucky Oaks day was the first time either of us had ever been to a race track. The next day I actually had the winner and the woman who would become my wife had the second horse. We had never heard of the term “exacta.” We had a great time. Someone told us that if we wrote to Churchill saying what a wonderful experience it was, they would continue to send us tickets. We thought it would be a great thing to give to others, never thinking that we would actually want to go each year.
In August, a work colleague suggested getting a group together to go to Saratoga. To me, “Saratoga” was a place on that page in the sports section where the baseball statistics resided. We went on a day a race called the Travers was run. Neither of us had either part of the exacta this time, but we were hooked.
On the following Saturday, we went to a wedding in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. On the way, we had to catch the Hopeful. So there we were, in the Penn Station OTB, dressed for a wedding. I would guess we kind of stood out in a venue that was probably as far from the Saratoga experience as you could get, but we absolutely had to see that race. (Gulch won.)
So that’s how we got hooked. The why is a much more difficult question. It turns out that we both loved to handicap, and we both loved nothing more than being at a racetrack, especially for the morning workouts. We would go to Suffolk Downs in the morning (when we had horses there), and then go back through the tunnel to go to our jobs in Boston. Nothing compares to the experience of having a horse nicker when she recognizes you. Or, for that matter, nothing compares with winning a nice bet through some good handicapping.
So that’s my story. What’s yours? You can respond in two ways. If you are willing to be public, you can click on “comments” under the heading. If you do not wish to be public, please respond by email (noonante@gmail.com). If you are willing to be contacted for follow-up, please let me know that by stating so in your email. If I do contact you by email, it will only be sent to you and not to a broader group so as to guarantee your confidentiality.
I hope you respond. I think this could represent an opportunity to inform the discussion about increasing the appeal of our sport. And, if it doesn’t, it should provide some great stories.
Tom Noonan 
A college buddy’s father trained horses at Suffolk Downs. My knowledge of racing was through the sports pages I scoured daily. Nobody in my family ever had any experiences at a racetrack. I would be the first. My buddy asked me if I wanted to go to the MassCap. It was a weekday (I checked this out online and it actually took place on Wednesday.) My friend bought a Form and I perused it and chose a horse named Fast Count. Fast Count was coming out of NY races and I knew enough to know that was better than Suffolk. Fast Count won and paid a little over $30. I thought that this was so easy. Next day in the local papers the headline read: Lame Shipper Wins MassCap. Ignorance was bliss. I was hooked after that by the challenge of the puzzle of handicapping.
Tom my mothers uncles were horse players and during this era living in Hoboken,NJ there was a bookie on every corner.
In high school I went to Aqueduct with a few buddies ( taking the A train) and really started to love the game during the Cauthen run.
Went to two of the triple crown wins of Affirmed also saw him win the Hopeful.
My grandparents had a house in Cairo NY and I was exposed to Saratoga. I remember watching Native Dancer on a very fuzzy back and white TV .
When the Meadowlands opened – live 5 Miles away- I walked hots for Mike Sedlacek, Steve Kesaris, Paul Kopaj and Glen Hild. Sedlacek won the meadowland training title
and was exposed to the Raggison and Jerry Brown sheets.
In conclusion racing is romantic, mysterious, great mental exercises and run in Besutiful out door settings.
I am move of a racing fan than a gambled—I am a NYRA REWARDS member–Joe
1973-Secretariat. I was 8yo and have been going to the track since then, I saw my first TC race in 1974 ( Little Current).I was born & raised in Western Mass, so I went to a lot of the fair circuit racing…Tri-County, Barrington, Marshfield & Brockton. In 1975 I tried to get into Hialeah & Gulfstream park, but I was 10 and you had to be 18+ to go. I’ve seen a lot of the greats in racing, notably Ruffian in her Mother Goose score by 13 lengths. Saw Seattle Slew & Affirmed win their TC races and I went to the 1986 KY Derby ( I bet on Snow Chief). Have been to Santa Anita, Saratoga, AQE, Pimlico in 1998 for Real Quiet’s Preakness. I loved going to Saratoga for the breakfast there and watching the workouts. Great fun : )
PS.. when I went to the 1987 Belmont, mom & I were in the paddock watching Alysheba, Bet Twice and Cryptoclearance go by. I call d out “Hey Crypto” and he stopped for a nano second and looked right at me before his groom led him around again. I’ll never forget that day : )
I got interested in racing through lelevison, a pretty common way for most kids in the 60s and 70s. My dad was watching ‘The Race of the Week; which I think was on CBS on Saturday afternoons, and they’d show the feature race from either New York or Florida. I liked horses, and I was attracted by the color. I also seem to remember that I could somehow tell when a horse didn’t look right, if it looked unbalanced, or its neck was too long or something. The first Kentucky Derby I remember watching on TV was in 1970 when I was 8. No one in my family was involved in racing. The first time I ever went to the races was for the 1976 Masscap at Suffolk Downs, my home track. I got married there in 1997, but my best day there was when Running Stag won the Masscap in 2000. I’d moved to England by then – my husband is English – and met Running Stag’s trainer there and told him the Masscap would be a good fit for his horse. He brought Stag over in 1999 and finished second, then made it his goal to come back the next year, and he won.
I had always been a horse fanatic. Read all the books in every library in my school(s) as many times as I could. Got Western Horsemen delivered to my house monthly at age 10. First race I remember televised was also a grainy black and white in 1972 with Arts and Letters running 2nd….Don’t really remember the next year of Secretariat! . Won a Shetland Pony in a contest much to my parent’s chagrin. Remained in contact with horse-showing friends in high school and much to my surprise in March of 1976 got a call from a gal friend who was breaking Tb babies at a farm in WA asking if I still was interested in horses…um….yeah!….and went to work grooming horses at Portland Meadows. Seriously thought I had died and gone to heaven (although looking back I was lucky to not kill any of them in my ignorance of racehorses and was CLEARLY taking care of too many) but had great neighbors in the barn area who felt sorry for me–the first horse I led over won, so I was hooked.
Learned to gallop, pony, eventually became an assistant trainer along with vet assistant, assistant track photographer, assistant identifer along the backside path. First marriage was to jockey who retired to train. It was absolutely in my blood. Signed, sealed and delivered. Never really looked back. Off track jobs included veterinary clinic tech support, and now currently a state racing commission employee. Could not be happier.
It’s Living Chess; and it can be beautiful besides.