The meet Duke
grew up on.

Duke grew up in Hudson, New York, sixty miles south of Saratoga, the youngest of three brothers in a family that lived for the races. He was at Saratoga before he can remember being anywhere else. There is a tape of three small kids running across the infield during a Travers in the late seventies, and one of them is him.

Thirty years of professional handicapping later, he still spends every summer at the meet. The backyard behind the paddock, the daily card, the cold mornings on the rail before first post. This is the track that made him a horseplayer. The Saratoga Pass is how he opens that work up to you for the entire meet.

Duke and his brother Paul hold a backyard at Saratoga every summer. It started small, ten or fifteen guys, and grew, year after year, into a standing crowd: twenty-five regulars, fifty people on a Saturday, everyone bringing something to eat and something to drink. Players who study the game and people who are just there for the day, in the same spot. The brothers are back there talking horses, getting stopped every five minutes, playing the races with whoever pulls up a chair.

The Members' Room (VIP) is that backyard for the rest of the year. The Saratoga Pass is how you sit at the backyard during the meet itself, from anywhere.