Vic Zast Saratoga Diary

Vic Zast’s daily journal of the Saratoga premier summertime race meet and the characters who make their annual pilgrimage there.

The Look of Leftovers

Suddenly, with the onset of Travers Week, the tone of the racecourse has shifted to horse racing. Saturday alone will feature four graded stakes. The horses that will race are among the best of their generations.... Read More

Slipping By

Time seems to fly by more quickly the older you get. That’s because a mere day represents a larger percentage of the time you have left than it did when you were young. ... Read More

New Round of Night Life

There have been 22 days of horse racing in Saratoga this summer─two fewer than the 24 mandated by the Harriman Law in 1962 that gave permanency to an exclusive season and 18 shy of the 40 that’ll be run before the leaves turn. ... Read More

Harvey Pack and Picnic Mats

Regarding The Jockey Club Round Table, Pack would say it’s the same old guys promising change and never delivering it. Pack's hackneyed comment might not be true any longer.... Read More

Hall of Fame Day

As has been customary the last several seasons, a standing room only audience gathered in Fasig-Tipton's Humphrey S. Finney pavilion for the Hall of Fall induction ceremony on Friday morning.... Read More

New York, New York

One of the meet's best innovations has been having jockeys sign autographs and pose for photos on Thursday mornings at breakfast on the Clubhouse Porch.... Read More

Fashion on Parade

Mechanicville, N.Y. has 5,000 residents. One in ten attended Ray Price’s 15th annual 'Stakes at Saratoga' party in the backyard of Saratoga Racecourse.... Read More

Time and Hope

The media took about a nanosecond to realize that both trainer Roger Attfield and jockey John Velazquez, who teamed up to win Monday's feature race with Kissable, were about to enter the Hall of Fame on Friday. ... Read More

Wishing Whitney Well

Hernandez had probably recorded the biggest triumph of his life and seemed more pre-occupied with helping the media know how Fort Larned managed to win than with celebrating.... Read More

Drinking It In

Are you among the one in a million people who believe that going to school would be something you'd like to do on your day off from work when you're supposed to be having fun or relaxing?... Read More

NYRA Air

For a small stretch of history, Saratoga produced competition of extremely high quality.... Read More

The Wedding Gift

A young man named Matty D thought it would be great fun to buy his friend Micah a gag wedding gift. Micah was married the night before and invited about 100 wedding guests to join him and his bride Biz on the rooftop of the Taqueria near the Post for the races the day after. ... Read More

Making the Grade

The American Graded Stakes Committee may wake up to the reality that the graded stakes of summer and fall for 3-year-old horses fail to meet the criteria of grade I competition. But it's likely the committee won't. ... Read More

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