A Seat in the Bleachers: A haunting Whitney Day, after the death of Maple Leaf Mel

The blanket of flowers won by Pretty Mischievous in Saturday’s Test at Saratoga hangs at the stall of Maple Leaf Mel, who was on the verge of winning the race, but broke down at the wire and had to be euthanized.

By Mike MacAdam/The Leader-Herald

SARATOGA SPRINGS — I was home in Rochester for our traditional Fourth of July family picnic a few years ago and went to Finger Lakes Racetrack to bet a couple races and grab a cold $6 Labatt Blue on a sunny summer afternoon.

I was among about 200 people in the stands, a good crowd for Finger Lakes. Flip-flops up on the back of an unoccupied seat.

During one of the races, a horse was pulled up by the jockey on the first turn during the gallop-out. The race was over, so everybody turned back to their Blues and hot dogs and racing programs. Everybody but me.

Out of habitual professional interest, I watched as a horse ambulance drove over there, then your heart sinks as the telltale blue screen is erected to block the view, indicating that the horse is about to be euthanized with an injury so severe as to be untreatable.

You never get used to it.

Then there was Saturday, at Saratoga Race Course.

Whitney Day, 2023, will haunt people for a long time.

You had an undefeated filly, an underdog by virtue of her having been bred in New York, owned by legendary NFL coach Bill Parcells, trained by a young woman, Melanie Giddings, from Canada who survived cancer, and for whom Maple Leaf Mel was named by Parcells.

The previous weekend, Giddings talked to us about Maple Leaf Mel’s upcoming assignment, the Grade I Test on Whitney Day, as her gray filly playfully gnawed at Giddings’ wristwatch. Maple Leaf Mel let us stroke her nose, and Giddings laughed as she recounted how she gets in the stall late every morning and lets her best horse lay her head on Giddings as the filly takes her pre-lunch nap.

Back to Whitney Day.

There’s a national TV audience, and a massive crowd of almost 44,000 on-track on a sunny afternoon, making it impossible to walk a straight line from the clubhouse to the paddock, which I did to get a photo of Parcells watching his star filly be saddled for the Test.

Then, disaster.

And suddenly it’s like your head is trying to unpack a hundred boxes at the same time.

Maple Leaf Mel had the Test won, leading by about two lengths just two steps from the wire. Nobody was catching her, and Parcells and Giddings were about to celebrate by far their greatest moment ever in Thoroughbred racing. Maple Leaf Mel was easy to root for, and tens of thousands of people did, in full throat.

Except Maple Leaf Mel’s right front leg didn’t cooperate with this story, snapping low near the hoof as she pitched forward, nose into the dirt, and sent jockey Joel Rosario to the ground. The filly got back up and started walking toward the middle of the track, the dazed Rosario watched from a kneeling position and all you could hear was a collective gasp, then silence.

The presence of the rest of the horses in the race, who passed the wire without incident, didn’t even register, at least not for me, watching from my customary spot at the rail in the winner’s circle.

Medical staff and veterinarians scrambled onto the track to attend to Rosario and Maple Leaf Mel.

Giddings had told us that Parcells is more like a father than a client to her, and shortly after she got through the crowd and onto the track, weeping, Parcells, with a blank expression, was next to her and covered his shattered trainer in a hug.

The screens went up right in front of the hushed apron and clubhouse box seats, and Maple Leaf Mel was put down, out of view, then loaded onto a horse ambulance and taken away.

Parcells, who is here every day, walked back up the stairs to his box seat, accepting occasional pats on the shoulder from the stunned crowd.

At that point, the $1 million Whitney itself almost seemed like a coda to the day and not the main event.

Fans still had an opportunity to see Cody’s Wish, who has gained national attention for having been named after a wheelchair-bound boy from Kentucky who shared a bond with the horse through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Cody Dorman and his family made the trip to Saratoga for the Whitney.

Except White Abarrio didn’t cooperate with this story, winning the Whitney by 6 1-4 lengths, while Cody’s Wish never really got going and finished third.

It surely didn’t warm hearts that White Abarrio is trained by Rick Dutrow, Jr., who just finished a 10-year suspension in January for various racing violations. For a segment of the sport’s fan base, Dutrow is easy to root against.

These horses aren’t machines, they’re professional athletes who are treated as such.They’re not pets, even if some of them, like Maple Leaf Mel, act like one when they’re just hanging out in the quiet moments that only their closest people see.

They’re domesticated animals, subject to the handling that we can offer as diligently and humanely as possible.

They have an inherent fragility, as 1,000-pound herd animals who bang into each other and run at speeds we, as humans, can marvel at, but requires physical forces that don’t always agree with their frames.

Still, people get attached. Deeply.

I went over to Melanie Giddings’ barn late Sunday morning to see if she would talk about Saturday. She politely declined.

By then, trainer Brendan Walsh had stopped by to deliver the blanket of white carnations won by his filly, Pretty Mischievous, in the Test.

Really, they belonged to Maple Leaf Mel. The blanket was draped over the chain in the doorway of her stall, and some of the winner’s circle photos from her victories were tacked around the doorway, creating a shrine.

It occurred to me as I walked back to my car that this was right around the time Melanie would’ve been in the stall with her filly’s head in her lap, taking her nap.

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