Saratoga: Sunrise on the Backstretch

By Thomas Dimopoulos

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- The sun rises over Saratoga Race Course like a big orange omelet.
Its light blazes the tree line along Union Avenue and drapes long shadows across the fabled street that leads to the backstretch.

Here, Francisco Zuniga is already at work.
'I come here at 5:15,' said Zuniga, tending to the morning workout, where the work is anything but routine.

'Each day is different,' said the groom. 'First thing, I check the horses. I take the bandages off make sure their legs are OK.'

Zuniga, who has been coming to Saratoga for the past 12 years, looks after five thoroughbreds. They stand in barns on the Oklahoma side of the backstretch.

Zuniga is one of the hundreds of grooms and hotwalkers, exercise riders and others who work here behind the scenes.

Many make their permanent residences downstate, where they are near NYRA's two other racecourses at Belmont and Aqueduct. That's where Zuniga's wife is, along with their two daughters. Their youngest celebrated her fourth birthday during a visit here last week. While some loved ones are able to come to Saratoga on an organized bus trip, for most, the six-week summer means being separated from family.

Times, cultures mingle at work and at play

The work keeps everybody busy during the day. Those looking for recreation during down-time can find a variety of activities on the backstretch, which is its own little town. The backstretch where they work is also where they eat, sleep and play.

Inside the Recreation Hall, there are five pool tables that get regular play; their ornate carvings date back to the war years of the 1940s. A sixth was converted with a special top into a ping-pong table and a jukebox leans against the far wall. English classes are offered twice a week.

Outdoors, there is a basketball court and a soccer field where workers play organized games in teams named Los Astros and Rinconada and compete between the goal posts under the night lights that tower over the field.

If the backstretch is its own town, then Nick Caras is its mayor.

The human resources employee, who has worked for NYRA for more than 25 years, is the go-to guy for everyone on the backstretch.

'If you had a grievance, this is where you settled things,' said Caras, pointing out one spot near the Recreation Hall where a boxing ring stood in the 1950s and 1960s. Times have changed. Today, the green, four-sided structure where the boxing ring used to stand reads 'Authentic Mexican Foods.'

There is a new medical center that is open every day, staffed with English- and Spanish-speaking doctors and nurses, as well as a new health care plan that offers workers more affordable medical insurance than what had existed in the past, Caras said.

Along the backstretch, there are also new offices being constructed for Umberto Chavez. He's the official ordained minister who begins his day seeing workers from backstretch to jockeys at 7 a.m.

'There is no typical day,' Chavez said. 'Every day is something new. A lot of times it is the depression of people being separated from their families. But it is rewarding, absolutely. We deal with the spiritual, the emotional and the social,' he said.

While many things on the backstretch have been converted through time, the area it sits on is historic ground.

Thin white rails wrap around part of the oval where Horse Haven, the mid-19th century track, stood when the race course was called Saratoga Trotting Course.

There are approximately 80 barns that now stand on the site, piled high with mounds of hay and rows of stalls adorned with hanging red plants and fixed with yellow buckets, adding to the scene's natural color.

Here, thoroughbreds are caught in a silhouette of early sunlight, a mist trickling off their torsos in the fog-filled morning.

Inside the adjacent Oklahoma Track, horses are running through their a.m. training. Their riders circle with them around the track, a rhythmic patter of distant hooves and the rider's calming tone: 'OK pappy, OK...'

The summer galas with their sparkling summer cocktails take place a few streets away. On Broadway, a band plays music the backstretch, fast asleep, will never hear.

Greeting the new day

Pamelo Andrade begins her morning around 5:30 with an exercise ritual for the equine. She wears a purple riding outfit that is as brightly colored as the dawn. She works alongside her brother and mother at Saratoga. Her father and two sisters do similar work for a trainer at a racecourse downstate.

Asked what was the first thing she does in the morning, her mother, Francisca Garcia, ponders the question.

'The first thing? Café,' she laughs. They work at the barns until noon. Then there is a mid-day break before returning for a few more hours of work in the late afternoon and early evening.

In addition to working the backstretch, many have second jobs at the main track across the street. They work in food service, as parking attendants or among the cleaning crew.

By 9 a.m., workers are starting to make their way into the main track wearing neatly pressed white shirts and black slacks, for a day of service. Some are already comfortable in their red vests, while others clutch them folded, trying to stave off the day's already sweltering heat. A parade of trucks pulls into the warehouse with goods that vendors will be selling to their customers throughout the day.

Under the roof of the grandstand, all is silent except for the whir of the ceiling fans. At the trackside below, rows of green benches are vacant, with no one yet there to occupy them. Race time is still a few hours away.

Shortly after 11 a.m. Francisco Zuniga begins to make his way across to the main track as well. He has worked as a groom on the backstretch all morning and now heads across Union Avenue, where at 11:30 he starts cooking sausages. It is how he will spend his afternoon when the crowds begin filing in, when the crescendo of human voices rises, when the sound of thoroughbreds race through the gates.

The bugler will sound the call to the post, and jockeys will mount their horses in the paddock. Gamblers will place their wagers, a variety of foods will be cooked, racing programs sold and the horses will run, for those two minutes of a race, like everything in the world depended on it.

Between the rising of the dawn and the parade to the winner's circle of the day's final race, everybody's got a job to do.

Published in The Saratogian