Trainer happy to be back at Saratoga Race Course
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Snow squalls mixed with sleet and freezing rain are a far cry from the balmy South Florida surroundings Phil Gleaves left before arriving in Saratoga Springs on Sunday.
But the 1986 Travers Stakeswinning trainer couldn’t be more excited because it’s his first time back at The Spa following a 15-year absence.
Gleaves, with a stable of ten 2-year-olds, is the first horseman on the grounds at the Oklahoma Training Track, which opened Monday in preparation for the Saratoga Race Course season that begins Friday, July 20 -- just three months from now.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be this cold, but there was no turning back,” said Gleaves, who recently purchased a home in Ballston Spa. “I came up early because I wanted to get the horses acclimated. Several of them are going to be running in early May, at Belmont. They’ve got nice blankets on, they’re cozy and happy. They don’t mind it at all. Only people do.”
Horses stayed in their stalls Tuesday, but Gleaves plans on giving them a good workout first thing Wednesday morning -- no matter what the weather is.
“I get up early at 4:30, jump in the shower, jump in the car, come to the barn and get here by 5:30 with coffee and buttered roll in hand from Stewart’s,” Gleaves said, smiling. “I check the horses, check the grooms, make sure everybody’s here that needs to be here, and then the exercise riders show up. We’ll start training at 6 and end about 9:30.”
Next, he heads back to the barn to look over horses’ feet and legs for possible problems. Then it’s home for lunch, before returning to the track to give horses more hay, make sure they have fresh water and give them more feed.
It’s a never-ending routine in the life of a thoroughbred trainer.
Gleaves lived year round in Florida for the past 15 years while his son was growing up. Now that he’s in college, Gleaves feels more comfortable heading North, without sacrificing family priorities.
He won the 1986 Travers with a horse called Wise Times, in just his second year as a trainer. After finishing ninth in the Kentucky Derby, the colt captured the Haskell Handicap and Super Derby, making the Travers his third straight Grade I victory.
He won the race, with Jerry Bailey up, by catching Broad Brush in the final stride.
Gleaves has had several other popular horses in the years since then such as Mambo Meister, who had career earnings of $703,725 with 11 wins, all at Calder, along with nine second- and six third-place finishes.
Now Gleaves is anxious to see which 2-year-olds are the most promising.
“They’re all well bred, good looking and well proportioned in their stature,” he said. “It’s a question now of finding out which ones have the more talent. There will be a couple of slow ones, and a couple of fast ones. I don’t know which yet.”
While he was busy in the barn, a small army of track maintenance workers were busy getting things ready as bigger stables are expected to start arriving next week. Crews fixed wooden railings, filled potholes and scooped up large piles of leaves.
The Oklahoma track’s reopening is a welcome sign for local businesses as well, such as Wilton-based Finish Line Feed Inc., which supplies horses with fresh hay and straw. Horses require one bale of straw per day for bedding, and a half bale of hay per day to eat.
This represents only a small slice of the approximately $250 million impact Saratoga Race Course has on the Capital Region economy.
“Yesterday we unloaded a tractor-trailer with 600 bales of straw for trainer Chad Brown,” said Jared Bromley, a Finish Line worker. “He’ll be in next week with a big stable. It’s a lot easier to get it done ahead of time. All the stalls will be bedded down.”
Finish Line purchases some hay and straw from area farms, from Washington and Rensselaer counties to the Mohawk Valley. But the highest-quality hay, fed to race horses, comes from Alberta, Canada and Washington state, said Bill Murauskas, Finish Line general manager. “They have the climate to grow the quality product guys at the racetrack are looking for,” he said. “It’s consistent.”
Irrigated alfalfa, for example, has 24-25 percent protein content. Lower-grade hay is for other horses such as saddle ponies.
Murauskas said it’s almost impossible to guess how many bales of hay and straw horses will go through before the 2018 meet ends on Labor Day Monday.
“Too many to count,” he said.