150 Years of Racing in Saratoga: Little Known Stories & Facts From America's Most Historic Racing City (Sports)

It may not be the Kentucky Derby, but Saratoga Springs went to the horses long before Churchill Downs. Since the inaugural meeting of August 1863, Saratoga Springs is home to one of the oldest sports venues in the country and has been the scene of memorable races, often featuring legends of the sport. Although some of the epic moments are still familiar today, such as Upset's defeat of Man o' War in the 1919 Sanford Memorial, many of the triumphs and defeats that were once famous have been forgotten. Few remember the filly Los Angeles, who thrived at Saratoga, winning sixteen stakes races, or the influential, sometimes suspicious, reasons why the track was closed three times for a total of six years. Authors Allan Carter and Mike Kane take a look back at these and other important but neglected stories and present statistics from the pre-NYRA years and a rundown of the greatest fields assembled at America's oldest track.

Allan Carter was a law librarian at the New York State Library for 30 years, retiring in 2003. In 1995 he was given the West Excellence in Government Law Librarianship Award. Immediately upon his retirement he joined the National Museum of Racing as an assistant to the historian, and became the museum's historian in 2004. Mike Kane was a newspaper sportswriter & columnist for 30 years, 25 of them at the Schenectady Gazette. From 2005-2010, he worked as communications officer at the National Museum of Racing. He won the Red Smith Kentucky Derby Writing Contest five consecutive years and is a former president of the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters Association.