100 years ago in The Saratogian
Saturday, July 27, 1918. The second wartime Saratoga race meet “will not only surpass in brilliancy the gathering of 1917, which was notable, but any carnival of racing tests held in this country since 1908,” predicts the head of the Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses in today’s Saratogian.
The 1918 meet begins on Thursday, August 1. Post time will be thirty minutes later than usual, at 3 p.m., the Association announces, in order to accommodate racegoers from Albany. Due to wartime limits on civilian rail travel, Albanians have to take a 1:50 p.m. train to the track rather than the familiar 12:30 p.m. train.
“There has always been something fascinating about the sport at Saratoga,” a reporter writes, “Nature intended it as a proving ground for the best horseflesh this continent could produce, and year after year the pride of this country and Canada have foregathered under the pines, drunk of the salubrious waters and fought for the mastery under conditions which could not be matched elsewhere.”
Saratoga is arguably the number one destination worldwide for racing fans as European tracks remain closed due to the world war. Association president Richard T. Wilson promises that “Visitors on Thursday will be given a surprise, indeed, so many and material have been the changes wrought since last season.” The Association has invested more than $100,000 in improvements, an amount equivalent to $1.668 million in 2018.
The race course itself is new and expected to be “one of the fastest in the world. A clay foundation that rendered the course “most treacherous” in wet weather has been replaced with loam, while drainage ditches were dug about the entire oval. “A retaining board keeps the soil from washing and with this change the track should dry out as rapidly as any in the country,” the reporter notes.
Handicapper Joe P. Murphy says, “I’m willing to make a wager right now that after the second rain has fallen here after the races are running that the mile will be made in as good as a minute and forty seconds, and that’s more than I would say for any other track around New York.”
For race fans and tourists in general, “splendid roads have been laid everywhere, and the landscape gardener’s art has been employed to make the grounds most attractive, thousands of rose bushes and flowering plants having been planted since spring.
“The clubhouse has been entirely refurnished and its furnishings and decorations represent the work of Mrs. Wilson, wife of the president, who has been here for some time [at] Hillcrest Cottage on North Broadway.”
— Kevin Gilbert