When Bill Price was a teenager growing up in Baltimore, his uncle took him to Pimlico Racetrack, and he was hooked. And before long, so was his family, road-tripping with him to Belmont Park, the Kentucky Derby and Saratoga. This Belmont weekend, the family traveled from Maryland, Vermont and Peru, N.Y., near the Canadian border. This is their first Saratoga Belmont, but Bill, in particular, has been a regular at the Belmont Stakes and at the Saratoga summer meeting for decades. A little – OK, a lot – of rain wasn’t going to keep them away today.
Holding a Belmont Jewel, the signature drink of the Belmont Stakes (bourbon, lemonade, pomegranate juice), sitting in her seat in the clubhouse, Bill’s sister Jennifer said, “We’re die-hards.”
They’re a foursome this Belmont weekend, joined by Bill’s wife, Deanne, and Bill and Jennifer’s mother, Constance. During the summer, a group of 40 of their friends and family members gather in the backyard. Deanne and Bill lived for a time in Ballston Spa, the town next to Saratoga, when he was transferred here for a job at NCR.
Constance studies the program between races, asking her son about the pedigree of a runner in the Met Mile. “Do any of them go back to Secretariat?” she asked. …
