Keeneland in the Morning

If you are a horse person then it's a given that you are a morning person. All the real hustle and bustle of the horse world, including the Keeneland Racetrack takes place nice and early before the sun comes up. Starting at 6am you will see jockeys out on horses schooling, exercising, and training on the track. You will see trainers on the sidelines with stopwatches, or hear them yelling out instructions. The pressure of race competitions slips away, and it's a great opportunity to see horses and jockeys in there day to day state of mind.
The track is open to the public to watch training occur daily throughout the year from 6am to 10am. On Saturdays they offer the chance to come eat breakfast at 7am, have activities for children, tours, demonstrations, seminars, and question and answer sessions with jockeys.
The Keeneland Track Kitchen has been called one of the best kept dining secrets in Lexington. It is open daily starting at 6am to anyone who wants to come in for a good hearty meal, and you might just get lucky enough to be sitting a table over from a famous jockey, trainer, or owner. The food is all prepared by Turf Catering, who has been working for Keeneland since the kitchen opened in 1936.

"Morning Workouts." Keeneland Racing and Sales. Keeneland Association, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.  

"Track Kitchen." Keeneland Racing and Sales. Keeneland Association, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.  

Tour Keeneland

Keeneland is all about involving the public into the day to day occurrences at the race track. One of the daily options offered are tours of the Keeneland Race Track. When you come to Keeneland you have two tour options, you can take a guided tour, or a self guided tour.

Guided tours must be requested in advance. You do have to pay to go on a guided tour, and they are only available for nonprofit groups, school groups, or business groups.

The second option is to pick any time on any day that is convenient for you, head to the main office to grab a farm map, or print out one at home. The maps create a nice little loops around the property that is recommended to follow. It has fourteen attractions, with a description and history of each attraction right on the map, including a little background information on Jack Keene, the founder of Keeneland. From there it's up to you where you will go and what you will see.

Here are some of the stops you might make along the way:
1) The Clubhouse
The Clubhouse was designed and built without the use of blueprints by Jack Keene. Entire house was built from stone, except the interior of the third floor which was intended to be a ballroom. The clubhouse is not open to the public, and membership in the Keeneland Club is required to enter the Clubhouse.

2) Grandstand South
The Grandstand South is one of the three public entrances along with Grandstand North and Grandstand East. This entrance has a small ticket booth, but it is for Will Call, and regular race tickets cannot be purchased there.

3) Early History Display
This attraction is exactly what it sounds like, it is a glass case containing information about the history and the founding of Keeneland. It is located on the wall on the backside of the Clubhouse.

4) The Keeneland Gift Shop
No public places are complete without a shop to get souvenirs. You can find lots of art, jewelry, and apparel in the Keeneland Gift Shop.

5) Paddock
The Paddock is comprised of the Saddling Paddock and the Walking Ring. The Saddling Paddock has open stalls where the horses are tacked up before, and the Walking Ring is where grooms and stable hands will walk the horses before they go to the main track to race. Between these two location there are jockey statues, and there is a sycamore tree in the middle of the Paddock that was planted the year that Keeneland opened in 1936.

6) The Grandstand
The Grandstand was originally built entirely of wood, but a rebuild, and several expansions have happened over the years to have twenty two corporate boxes and two dining rooms in addition to all of the public viewing space. The winners circle is located on the left side of the stands, and next to that is the Jockey Scale, so weigh the jockeys and their tack to make sure all horses are carrying the same amount of weight when they race. Box 58 on the second floor of the Grandstand is the box that was reserved for the Keene family during races.

7) Racetrack
The racetrack and one and one sixteenth mile long, with top of the line footing, and the first vertical track drainage system. This track was also the first racetrack in the country to install aluminum railings around the permitter of the track. There used to be two small ponds in the tracks inner green, but the sun glare became to unbearable, so the ponds were drained.

8) The Racing Office
This is where the business aspect of the races takes place, and the show secretary takes nominations and entries for the races. This is also where competitors are given their numbers and positions for the races.

9) Training Track
A track with a length of five eighths of a mile that can be used year round for training and exercising horses. It is the first public track to have synthetic polytrack footing.

10) Stable Area
In 1935 six barns were built on property. Today there are fifty seven barns on property and can keep up to two thousand horses at once.

11) The Track Kitchen
Turf Catering has been running the kitchen at Keeneland since 1936, and feeds trainers, jockeys, owners, stable hands, and the public daily throughout the year. The times of operation vary depending on the time of year.

12) Sales Pavilion
This structure is home to the largest, and most credible equine sales in the world. There are four sales held here throughout the year, and the first sale was held in 1943.

13) The Parking Lot
It may not sound like anything special, but the driveway and parking lot were designed to be eye catching and feel like a park. There are drive-thru betting locations, and large metal, green posts at the entrance that say KA, standing for Keeneland Association.

14) The Library
The Last stop on the tour is the Keeneland Library, housing thousands of books, newspapers, magazines, videos, pictures, and news clippings. A donation to the Keeneland Association by William Arnold Hanger in 1939 provided the funding to construct the library. The library is open to the public for use year round.

"Keeneland Tours." Keeneland Racing and Sales. Keeneland Association, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.  

Fashion on the Field

Fashion and dress are a very important aspect of modern day society, and over the years attending a race has become a reason to dress to the nines.  The 2012 Lexus Fashions on the Field fashion show was held at Keeneland, and provided a hair and makeup room for the contestants in the Makers Mark Lounge before they went onstage. The competition was held in heats, the woman, who took the event very seriously, went first and the judges picked semi finalists from each heat. Second were the men, who took it much less seriously, and proceeded to dance across the stage with fake mustaches, imitate jockeys, and just have fun with the event. However, the attire for the occasion was taken seriously by both genders, with the winners dresses appropriately, and spectacularly for both the occasion and the chilly weather. The tradition of extravagant hats being worn to races was also maintained as all the women made sure to have stylish hats by Polly Singer to match their outfits. The winners and runners up were all received pricey awards for their placings, including several thousand dollars of jewelry, gift cards to clothing shops, spas, and much more. Dressing it up for high class races clearly pays off.

"Fashions on the Field." Fashions at the Races. Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2014 <http://fashionattheraces.com/events-2/fashions-on-the-field-keeneland/>

Keeneland Auctions

The biggest aspect of business at Keeneland, even above the races, is the sales auctions. The auctions are held 4 months out of the year, and they are very exciting in 2 ways. The first is that those coming to bid and buy and very knowledgeable, and also well funded, making the bidding wars for horses intense and engaging. The second way is to come as a spectator to witness the sales. 

There is a sales room that is usually packed with people, and where you are located in the room has to do with social order. There are rows of seats located in the sales room, but the seats are reserved for those who are actually bidding on horses or selling horses. Spectators are free to stand at the back of the room, out of the way of the horses and the buyers and sellers. Admissions is free to all during the sales.

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Buyers have the options to ask representatives questions, and inspect the horses 48-24 hours before their sales time. As soon as the auctioneer drops the hammer, the horse officially belongs to the highest bidder.  Economically, if you do have standing credit with Keeneland there is a 30 minute time span to pay for the horse purchased, if credit has been established then the time span extends to 15 days. Once the horse is purchased, depending on the month, they must either leave the property the same day, or within 24 hours. 

“Attending an Auction.” Keeneland Racing and Sales. Keeneland Association, Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.  

Keeneland Library

One of the most valued attractions at Keeneland is it's library. The Keeneland library is one of the few equine specific libraries in the world, and of those, one of the only that is open to the public throughout the entire year. A vast collection of works and materials are available to please a broad client spectrum from children, to researchers, to writers, to breeders, and tourists. There are endless collections of pictures, videos, race records, fiction and non fiction books, articles, stud books, and so much more.  For example there are records and articles on African American jockeys, many of which have been read and used for research by authors. 

In 1978 a woman named Amelia Buckley oversaw the library at Keeneland. Her thesis A Guide to the Keeneland Library was published to the University of Kentucky Press and helped expand the use collections, and the use of the library. The library closed the gap between Keeneland's racing community and the public. The library is even used by cinematography businesses to do research for racing related movies, or even just for the use of horses during filming. 

Woodress, Frederick. "Library Life: A Library at the Races." American Libraries 9.2 (1978): 78-79.           JSTOR. Database. 10 Oct. 2014. 

Documentary

A documentary is not just any sort of filmed work, it does what its name is; it documents. In order for a documentary to successfully fulfill its purpose, there are a handful of things it should do. Just like any written, filmed, or spoken work, the beginning should be an introduction to the topic. In a documentary the introduction should include background information as well as a strong visual and spoken thesis before diving in to the rest of the film.  

From there a good documentary will include other short clips or sound and voice recordings from or about that subject that is being covered. Throughout the entire documentary questions should be asked to engage the audience, and also raise questions to keep interest. Continuing to bring up and ask new questions is helps introduce subtopics and new information. Another characteristic of a good documentary is having guest interviews to show several thoughts, opinions, and input on the subject. This use of multiple informants makes it more interesting than listening to the same person, but also creates a stronger credibility. 

The documentary should include time references and well as cultural references to help the audience get a better understanding of the setting. Any good documentary should be professionally constructed so that the information and visuals are well presented in a logical order. This also means that the sound and the picture are clear, and the changing of scenes blend together well. Strong sound and music effects create stronger emotions and intensities, while a change of pace is audio and visuals can also have the same effect, and hold the viewer interest.

All of these things add up to the overall presentation of the topic and the information surrounding it. The more of these qualities that a documentation has, the better it will be.

Proposal Experience

My experience working on this proposal has been an excellent, give or take a few anxiety moments that come with being a perfectionist. Picking a topic that I am actually very interested, and mostly knowledgeable in was a major help, as I knew good recourses to access, and what specifically I wanted to get background information on. Researching and writing was the easy part, but putting together my presentation was not as simple.
I had set very high expectations for myself, and has an intricate plan on what I wanted my visual to look like. I spent hours trying to find a map of Lexington in the 1930's to compare with a map of present day Lexington to show that was the rest of the city has changed, Keeneland has stayed just as large in volume as the day it was bought. It took lots of convincing from my roommate that I would have to accept the fact that I had other assignments to do, and if I presented the facts well, having one more map would not make or break my grade.
Overall, I am very excited to see where this project could go if it is chosen to be researched further, there are many available resources, and opportunities that would really allow this project to be an excellent one.