Saratoga Race Course: At The Starting Gate

By Thomas Dimopoulos

SARATOGA SPRINGS - There have always been two things you could count on,
a starting line and a finish line. From chariots to Chargers, competitors have
been held behind ropes, leaned over chalk lines and awaited the shot of a starter gun
at the beginning of a race.
The 1920s ushered in the technological age and the installation of the mechanical
starting gate at racecourses. It may have made the starting line more fair, but it
also meant a whole new learning curve for horses.

At the Saratoga Race Course, more than a dozen people work on the gate crew,
training and re-training the horses every day in the unnatural act where racehorse
meets machine.
Shortly after the bugler sounds the call to the post and the outriders lead the parade
to the starting gate, nothing happens until head starter Richie Brosseau says so.

'Once they get to the gate, they are our responsibility,' Brosseau said.
'Then afterwards, we are either blamed or congratulated depending on how things went.'

Brosseau and a group of assistant starters work the races throughout the day,
but the practice with horses begins hours prior to post time.
Half the crew works with the horses at a starting gate on the Oklahoma side.
Brosseau leads another group on a far corner of the main track that they call
the seven-eights chute.

'We are here from 7 to 9:30 a.m. schooling the young horses and also working
with the (experienced) ones that need a refresher course,' Brosseau said.
Even veteran horses need some fine tuning from time to time.

'Maybe they have two or three good runs, then something happens that might
scare them. So they come back in for some maintenance,' he explained.

During the actual race, the crew keeps detailed charts. If there is a problem
with a start, Brosseau notifies the trainer that their horse will have to come in
for schooling.
The trainers are pretty good about it, Brosseau said.
From their position at the starting gate, the crew will sometimes see a problem
up close that can't be noticed from the distance. It is all about making the horse
a better competitor. The morning schooling program, brings many equine students.

'We probably see about 100 horses a day on both sides,' said Brosseau, who grew
up around horses in his native Montreal and began his career with the trotters
before moving on to thoroughbreds in 1969. He became an assistant starter
in the early 1970s and recently elevated to the title of the head starter.

'This career is something you have to learn on-the-job,' he offered.

Butch Hocker has been an assistant starter for more than 20 years, and has
been around racetracks, he said, ever since tagging along with his father and uncle
to tracks as a boy growing up near Delaware.

He started out as a hotwalker and worked his way up through the ranks of
the backstretch. A generation later, the job is still as unpredictable as it was from
day one, and requires a certain type of person to do the work.

'It's something you really have to love,' Hocker said. 'As assistant starters, you
can't be the kind of person who worries too much about things.
You can't be scared about getting hurt. You take your lumps and bumps,
dust yourself off and get right back up,' he said.

'Wednesday was a good day, Thursday I had a day off, and Friday was just bad,'
he said, recounting an up-and-down week that saw him both at the top of his game
and nearly trampled under foot during one early morning session.

'I was standing at the gate, and one of the horses had a problem being a little
nervous,' said Hocker, pointing to the green gate where there are 14 stalls
with gates that bang open with the buzzer. On the back, there is a short
V-shape gate that locks the horse in. The chutes are lined with padding throughout
to protect the horses and the riders.

One moment, horse and rider were sitting calmly inside the gate. In a heartbeat,
everything changed.

'All of a sudden, the gate popped open. It had malfunctioned somehow, and we
were both caught off guard,' he said. The horse took off, with its rider awkwardly
bounced in the air. Without time for thought, Hocker grabbed hold of the horse's
strap, which he calls a shank.

'I had a hold of the shank. You're taught to hang on until you can't hold on
anymore,' he recalled with frame-by-frame accuracy: The horse breaking out,
the rider nearly thrown clear, being tossed up into the air, and Hocker holding
on to the strap beneath the horse's legs, while tumbing next to the charging thoroughbred.

'The shank was in a funny spot,' he said. 'I held on until I saw the hind legs.'
A close call, but order was restored.

'I got up and dusted myself off. You just chalk it up and put it behind you.
Eventually, you get to see the horses day in and day out and you get to know
their personalities. For the races, we're there about a half hour before they start,
getting ready. In between the races, we have about 20 minutes, so we'll talk
about anything that may have gone wrong,' he said. 'Then it's on with the show.'

Brosseau's demeanor, is like that of a calming therapist.
Hhe can be found at the starting gate, leading a troupe of uniformed assistants
who wear bright red visors on their baseball caps. At race time, after the tractor
has pulled the gate to its starting position and its engine idles with a soft rumble,
they can be seen directing the horses into the starting gate, one at a time.
One man pulls the thoroughbreds into the stall by the reins;
another secures the swinging gates into their sealed 'V' position from behind.
It is not more than a heartbeat when the last horse is in that the loud ringing of the bell
sets the cacophony for the opening of the front of the gates, and the voice of Tom Durkin
can be heard echoing around the track: 'And ... They're off.'

Barely two minutes later, as all eyes turn to the prize and the celebrations in the winner's circle, there are 14 men at work making their way around the track to the next starting line, far away from the ecstatic joys and grunting agonies of the crowd.

Afterward, they will either be blamed or congratulated depending on how things went. Then they will dust themselves off and get right up to the starting line again and again.

Published in The Saratogian