Pond Press Books




	I started going to the racetrack in 1973. Mostly I went to the local track, Suffolk Downs, home of hard-nosed horse players and low priced claimers, but occasionally I ventured as far as Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire or Narragansett Park in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which has since closed. The next year I made it to Saratoga, a world apart with its strawberries-and-cream breakfasts and million-dollar thoroughbreds. I've gone back there every year since. From my very first trip to the track, I knew I wanted to photograph there, but it wasn't until my second Saratoga trip that I began to do so. At first, it was just casual shooting between races. Soon photographing replaced horseplaying as my primary activity. I shot for magazines, newspapers, and, mostly, for myself -and I began to dream of doing this book. Whenever I could find the time, I traveled to different racetracks. Over the next several years, I visited about a dozen tracks across the United States. The trips varied from three days to two weeks, but my routine was always the same. Each morning I would get up early to photograph the workouts and the backstretch activity, and each afternoon I would shoot the action at the track. Only occasionally would I take the afternoon off and work on the Racing Form instead. I pursued this book for several years, then shelved the project. I was busy with other books and teaching and hadn't yet found a publisher. While I continued to go to the track, I went strictly for pleasure. In 1985, with Brendan Boyd's help, I decided to revive the racetrack project. The idea of doing a truly collaborative book appealed to me, particularly since Brendan took me to the track for the first time (although for reasons unclear to me, he denies this). Anyway, we have been going to the track together for many years now and share both an interest in, and a common perspective on, racing. The book was published by Viking Penguin in 1987. It was well received, but it soon went out of print. When the second and now third editions were printed, we decided to keep the book pretty much intact, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to change a few of the photographs. Some of the additions are recent shots, but most are older ones that have improved (in my mind) with the passing of time. Brendan moved to Santa Fe, Montreal, and eventually Paris. His home tracks are now Longchamps, Saint-Cloud, and Deauville. I stayed in Boston, making do with simulcasting at Suffolk Downs until the Saratoga meeting begins. For those who care about technical matters, the early photo-graphs were taken with Leica rangefinder cameras and Nikon SLRs. Now I use Canon EOS autofocus cameras and various point-and-shoot models. Films vary from Kodak Tri-X and T Max (400 and 3200) to Ilford XP 1 and XP-2. I took all the photographs here in available light - mostly hand holding the camera but sometimes using a tripod. Porter Gillespie, Andrea Raynor and Evan Scheele made the prints, using fiber paper (Ilford Multigrade or Kodak Polyfiber), under my supervision. We slightly cropped about half of the photographs. In 1986, some friends and I purchased a New York-bred colt named Omar Khayyam for the paltry sum of $5,000. The trainer said that this was his "Belmont horse". We thought he was nuts. Omar never ran in the Belmont, but to everyone s amazement he competed in stakes company. He was voted New York-bred Sprinter of the Year in 1987, and chalked up earnings of over $300,000 before a foot injury forced his retirement. We promptly invested the profits in three more horses and they all lost money. I should say, they lost all our money. With that experience, I retired from horse ownership for a while. But a few years ago a friend convinced me to buy a few horses. They couldn't run much, but we do have high hopes for our new two-year-old Personal Hope filly. She may be our Belmont horse. Back to the top