Playing Hooky at Fair Grounds

Fair Grounds skyline image (above) by Eclipse Sportswire. All other photos courtesy of Geoff Worden.
Daytime weekday baseball is a tradition for many. I prefer the racetrack.
There is an extra boost of excitement knowing you are watching Thoroughbreds giving it their all when most people are stuck at work.
During a normal Fair Grounds meet, I make my way out to the track on weekdays much more often than I have this season.
Perfect for lunch: Watch a few races, no charge for general admission and you might win some money. Or leave work a little early and catch the last races of the day.
I love the experience either way, especially on a crisp, sunny day — picking horses and sipping a cold beer. For nearly three weeks now, I have been trying to find a day that allows me to go and offers good weather. That hasn’t happened, so I went on a day that showed an 80-100% chance of rain with lightning on the cloud icon on my weather app. It was also the middle day of three with a flash-flood watch.
The crowd was bigger than I anticipated, but benches at the paddock were readily available. The scratches were surprisingly minimal except for the four turf races, for which fields became significantly smaller because of a move to dirt.
Scattered raindrops accompanied the first race, but that was the only precipitation while I was there. A spot of blue sky appeared before the first post. It lasted almost until the third.

Based on the soggy predictions, Brian Spencer, analyst for Fair Grounds, broadcast his take on each race from the second floor above the paddock, under cover.

I decided to take advantage of Throwback Thursday (every Thursday this meet) and get a $2 hotdog. Fair Grounds dogs are delicious, one of the best I’ve had at a racetrack, and once mine was loaded up with mustard and some Louisiana hot sauce, it was even better. The dog has a perfect snap, noticeable but not overly chewy, and the flavor is very good. The special on Throwback days also includes $2 Miller Lite. Since the normal price is $4.75 it’s a relatively good deal, but light beer out of a can does not call my name.
Quiet days like this one allow for some wandering and exploring, and I noticed something I had never seen before. Had I missed it? Or was it new? The items displayed were anything but new. Fair Grounds is the third oldest racetrack in the country, and in the early years they successfully focused on attracting women. This display is a quilt of silk programs from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They are a bit tattered but an amazing slice of history and a distinct reminder that racing has a long history in New Orleans.

The explanation reads:
“From the first season in 1872, women made up an important portion of the Fair Grounds patronage. Many accommodations and promotions were designed for female visitors, including a reserved area of the grandstand named ‘Beauty’s Corner,’ and ‘Ladies Days,’ which featured free admissions and complimentary silk programs.
The silk program era included the final decade of the Nineteenth century and the first decade of the Twentieth. This quilt, sewn and donated by a lady of New Orleans, shows the color and grace of those silk programs and the women for whom they were made.”
But the real reason I was there was to enjoy the racing. And enjoy it I did!
One of the added bonuses on Thursday was the sound. Horses running on a sloppy track produce a different noise than when they run on a dry one. Firm turf or a fast surface generate the classic description of thundering hooves. While the sound remains intense and fairly loud, seven or eight horses racing past you sounds like a dozen or so people slapping their palms down fast and hard on a wet table, multiple claps with a hint of splash and splatter. On a sloppy day, I can only imagine the urgent desire, for both horse and jockey, to get on the lead, perhaps for surer footing but certainly to avoid mud flying into eyes and onto faces.
Of the six races I got to enjoy until other duties called, four were wire-to-wire (when a horse leads from start to finish) wins. This is far from what I consider normal in the racing world. Only one horse made a strong finishing run and nearly caught the winner, who held the lead nearly the entire race. That was the #7 horse, Argumental, in Race 5. Perhaps that was due, at least in part, to the screens on the eyes. This horse ran fourth in a field of six for half the race and made a strong bid late to finish second. I will be on the lookout for horses with giant, fly eyes on future sloppy track days.
It was a delightful escape from things needing to be done and a great reminder to get out to the track on quiet days more often.