“People still have mud on their feet and smell like horses.”
Dr. Merlwyn Belcher, a Turfway veterinarian.
A shadowy twilight of dawn seeps through the windows of Turfway Park's track kitchen.
Day breaks early on the back-side of a racetrack. And especially early on Beam Day.
Owners, trainer s and backstretch help sip coffee while deliberating the intricacies of workouts published in the morning racing form. They religiously recount each step of a horse's conditioning.
“They all come early on Beam Day,” said Dee Schatz, chief cook at the trackside eatery. “They get their work done really early, put on clean clothes and come back.”
The Jim Beam Stakes, with its' $600,000 purse and growing reputation for producing Triple Crown winners, is the biggest show of the year at the Florence track. The excitement carries to the backside, where a supporting cast of more than a thousand readies for show time.
“By first post it's disaster,” said Schatz, who has worked in the kitchen since it was rebuilt four years ago. “Wall to wall people. You can't hear yourself think.”
“But just before the Beam goes off, it gets really, really quiet.”
The track, normally closed for training at 11:00 a.m., shuts its gates at 9 a.m. on Beam Day.
Standard post time for the first race Saturdays is 1p.m. But on this day, the rally to bring "em over for the first resonates through the barn area two hours early.
Meanwhile chauffer-driven celebrities are recovering from midnight champagne toasts in Turfway Park"s gala Homestretch Room. They dribble into the VIP tent during the first few races, warm-ups for the big races on the card.
The tent, which holds 2,000 people, is the largest sit-down tent in the United States, said Turfway Park, said Turfway proprietor Jerry Carroll.
The people in the tent are in a different world than the people with the horses, said mutual clerk Jim Barnes, who holds down one of five mutual windows in the track kitchen. The VIPs bet $2 across. The more money they have, the tighter they are, Barnes said.
But the crowd in the tent isn't at Turfway to garner a fortune through the windows. They are celebrating the premier springtime event in Northern Kentucky.
“I go back many years with racehorses, back when The Beam was the Spiral Stakes,” said Wayne Carlisle of Carlilse Construction and a former member of the racing commission.
“The race wasn't recognized by anybody. Today I entertain a lot of clients. The number one event they love is Turfway Park. I'll buy 11 tables in the tent. My customers, if they don't get asked back, call to ask me if they've done something wrong.”
Racing was dead five years ago, Carlisle said.
“Jerry Carroll has pulled it out of the mud.”
Most on the backside would agree.
“Turfway is a much more user friendly track,” said Ken McPeek, who cut his teeth on the old Latonia Backside. “I remember when the barns were covered in plastic to keep the cold out.”
It was very difficult to work under those conditions.
McPeek, the meet's second leading trainer, was runner-up in last year's Beam with Tejano Run, which went on to win a second place finish in the Kentucky Derby. His stable horseshoer, a vital member of Team McPeek, reminisces about earlier days while checking the shoes on a quiet bay.
“I got my first license in 1967,” said Errol Bradford.
In the early 89s, a trainer named Cadillac Jack stuffed four horses in the blacksmith's workshop,
“The quality of horse and owners has improved drastically since then,” Bradford said.
Track veterinarians report similar scenarios.
“Jerry Carroll has done a service for the horsemen,” said Dr. Meriwyn Belcher. “ Money is going in the owners' pockets, and it's helped everybody.”
“I don't think the horses have changed all that much. But the vets take it a whole lot more seriously. All the vets used to be gone by 9 p.m. Now they stay until the last race is over.”
“Increased purse money hasn't really changed public perception, Belcher said. “It's such a volatile business that they are an economic risk. People still have mud on their feet and smell like horses.”
Chicken today and feathers tomorrow has been a standard credo for anyone in the racehorse game. On Beam Day, it's chicken across the board. Picnic tables stationed around the barn welcome passers-by to taste a variety of culinary specialties.
It's a warm day. The track is in tip-top shape for the showcase of 3-yr-old super stars.
And the No.2 horse just paid $10 to place.
Life doesn't get much better than that.
