FATHERS…AND RACING
How many of us were introduced to horse racing by our fathers, and how many fathers have cherished memories of being at the track with their children?
Bruce C. Spizler, a Maryland senior assistant attorney general who was part of the legal team that kept the Preakness in Maryland, recalls the day his father first brought him to Pimlico as a young child, and the lifetime of racetrack memories the two shared.
Read his Father’s Day story at the Baltimore Sun.
Then come back to the Paulick Report and share your memories.
Tags: Bruce Spizler, Father's Day, Paulick Report, pimlico, preakness, Ray Paulick
June 20th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Until my Dad died in 94 we’d always go to the track on Fathers Day, something we’d been doing it seems like forever. He took me to the races when I was about 8 and it was just like my first major league ball game, an experience I won’t forget. It was mostly the sounds and the smells that I loved an of course the horses. The roar of the crowd when the field turned for home, and the constant smell of cigar smoke. I still go but miss those tings today
June 20th, 2010 at 10:39 am
I just wanted to say the story Mr. Spizler writes was a beautiful story…..
June 20th, 2010 at 11:30 am
My dad used to raise, breed, and race TBs… As a very young girl, I was in LOVE with the horses and horseracing… We used to go to the track to watch our horses run, and though they usually didn’t do very well, we always had fun. Once, at about age 7, I won on a $2 win ticket, but my winning was just about $4… But I was so excited! Still, as a 37 y.o. I’m still in love with the horses and the racing, but don’t bet much anymore.
June 20th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
It was always the other way around with me and my dad. I got into horse racing all on my own, but I was too young to drive and too young to get in the gates without an adult, so my dad always took me. He likes racing now because of me, and without his help I could never have become as big a fan as I am now. Thanks Dad!
June 20th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I don’t know about the ladies but there’s no better place for father and son bonding then the racetrack
June 21st, 2010 at 2:38 am
My dad was the one that sat me down in front of the TV on the first Saturday in May 1997. “Watch this, you’ll love it” heh… If he had only known!
June 21st, 2010 at 8:12 am
My father passed away a year ago at 85. I will always remember sitting in the den reading the form and hearing him say “if you spent as much time studying in college as you do reading that form you would have been a Rhodes Scholor”. He enjoyed racing but was just trying to make a point. I look back now and think about what he said. After many years of being an investment executive, I now consult for several different racing companies and have several farms with over 80 broodmares………BOY WAS HE RIGHT.
June 21st, 2010 at 8:25 am
I am in the horse business because i started going to Greenwood racetrack with my Grandfather watching him bet $2 dollars a race. This family tradition was handed down to both myself and my father. Racing cannot thrive without live fans that see, smell and feel the excitement of racing. Simulcasting may now be a necesary evil but fan interest cannot be sustained without going to the races. jgs
June 21st, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Thanks for sharing this beautiful story for Father’s Day, Ray. Mr. Spizler expressed it so well it brought tears to my eyes. Since my parents were divorced when I was small, I never experienced any of these things with my dad. However, since we’ve gotten closer after I’ve grown into a mature woman, he calls me after the big races to see if my horses, the ones I like, have won because he now knows how much I’ve come to care for horseracing. When he was younger he used to follow the quarter horses in Ruidoso so even though we didn’t forge the bond in my youth, it is a common thread in our conversation now and I treasure the connection.
June 21st, 2010 at 10:22 pm
My father was not there the day I walked onto the turf track winner’s circle at Keeneland after watching a three year-old filly by the name of Gimmeakissee win the Grade 3 Valley View Stakes at Keeneland in October 1999. He had died six years before I had purchased the filly out of a foalshare arrangement and given her to my children, Leigh and Hurst Nuckols as a weanling. I was escorting these two young owners on their first trip to the winner’s circle at Keeneland and they were the winners of a graded stakes race! They were twelve and nine years old, respectively. I will never forget looking upwards with tears in my eyes and wishing that my father and their grandfather could physically be there with me and his grandchildren, but knowing that he was spiritually with us and looking down upon us with a great deal of pride in knowing that another generation on Nuckols was following in his footsteps on that hallowed ground. It was the best feeling that I have ever had in my life watching my children receive their gold julep cup from Bill Greely who had been such a good friend of my father.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:56 am
Alfred,
That’s a wonderful and very personal story, and I appreciate you sharing it with our readers. Here’s hoping your children some day pass the torch to another generation as well. –Ray