NEWS
Strolling into the memory gap
Posted: Saturday, August 18, 2001
Downtown Saratoga Springs has undergone changes reflecting the times in Thoroughbred racing
The precise chronology of my personal memories of Saratoga Springs has reached the mumbling stage. Admit it, you know what I mean. After one reaches a certain age, when pressed about the dates of fabled events from the dewy dawn of one's personal history, one casually brushes a careless hand across the mouth as you mention the frighteningly ancient annum. The best way to cope is to think of one's self as "classic" rather than "old."
Suffice it to say, the author can remember sauntering down Broadway in Saratoga Springs, New York, regaled by the bubbly commentary of the late, lamented DeWitt Owen more than 30 years ago. (Okay, so the memories are getting a bit shimmery. It must be the heat wave.)
One of the many enduring charms of Saratoga Springs has been the quaint, decorative, and unique quality of its downtown. Although the malling of America has blighted Saratoga's intersection with Interstate 87, just like every other American small town, Broadway remained immune, it seemed, from the numbing homogenization of American culture.
Until this year. Oh, the Victorian gingerbread of the Adelphi and Rip Van Dam Hotels, remnants of Saratoga's turn-of-the-century grandeur, are still there-right next to the new Gap and Banana Republic shops. Right across the street is the new Eddie Bauer store, just a few doors down from the Saratoga News hole-in-the-wall newsstand that has been a fixture on old Broadway since before I took that first stroll past Canfield Casino and Congress Park. Starbucks arrived in vanguard last year.
Thus, one more personal annual rite is doomed to extinction. Yearly cynical speculation on which kitschy, crowded, idiosyncratic Saratoga shop front would be able to survive from one August to the next on more than its owners' dreams does not apply-or at least not in the same way-to the faceless corporations behind the Gap and Eddie Bauer.
The only possible reason why a large corporation would risk opening stores in a market as small as Saratoga Springs is the phenomenal success of Saratoga Race Course. While the Gap portrays itself as urban hip, Saratoga Springs is small town. The population of Saratoga Springs in any month but August is 26,000.
Attendance at Saratoga Race Course on August 5, 2001, the day of the A. G. Vanderbilt Handicap (G2), was a record 66,942 on a T-shirt giveaway day. A significant portion of those people make a long weekend of their visit to Saratoga Race Course, and Eddie Bauer and the Gap are betting that those visitors will find the familiarity and sameness of their new stores comforting and alluring to them when they are not at the track. Just think, Mom can get her back-to-school shopping done at the Gap while Dad is winning enough money at the track to pay for it all. Well, one presumes that's the general idea.
That kind of gamble is actually very good news for Thoroughbred racing. The bottom line in these United States of America has always been the bottom line. If Thoroughbred racing can attract enough paying customers to a market as small as Saratoga Springs to make the Gap, Eddie Bauer, and Banana Republic stores go, it is a pretty good advertisement for Thoroughbred racing to corporate America. I can see it now, the Banana Republic Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1). (Or would it be Banana Republic World Thoroughbred Championships Sprint, or the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships Sprint? But that's another issue.)
In a mass culture, numbers matter. Although the magic of Saratoga, Del Mar, and Keeneland Race Course does not easily translate to other racetracks, the arrival of corporate America in downtown Saratoga Springs shows how important it is for Thoroughbred racing to try.
However much we may regret what is lost in uniqueness and charm-and we do, desperately-the only way to survive is to give the people what they want. At Saratoga, just like at Camden Yards, what the people want is something that feels old and unique but with all the modern conveniences.
To survive, Thoroughbred racing must attempt to achieve that elusive combination.
John P. Sparkman is bloodstock/sales editor of Thoroughbred Times.
