To that, he might just say: “Horse pucky.”
When Engelhardt was a kid of 9 or 10, his magical escape during summer vacation in upstate New York was Saratoga Race Course, where his older brother, Bob, was a white cap usher and John clandestinely ran bets for him.
When he wasn’t doing that, he roamed the track, especially the paddock area, often following the jockeys who he saw as silk-shirted Pied Pipers. Always he took in the sights, sounds and smells and eventually he got a little Brownie camera and recorded what he saw.
After college, he took his degree in social work and worked his way up until he ran a diversion program for nonviolent felony offenders at the Dayton Workhouse.
Then out of the blue some 25 years ago, he took a two-thirds pay cut to return to the race track as a photographer at Columbus’ Beulah Park, then called Darby Downs.
Today, Engelhardt — who lives in Kettering with wife Pegge and three college-aged sons — is the director of publicity and public relations at River Downs, hosts a popular twice-weekly handicapping racing show called “The Regular Guy” and, just like when he was a kid, still loves roaming the race track.
The magic he now finds — whether it’s at River Downs, Keeneland, Churchill Downs or on area horse farms — he still captures for the rest of us to see. That’s produced a fascinating photo show he has on display for the month of June at the Roesch Library on the UD campus. The artist’s reception is Saturday, June 12, from 2 to 4 p.m.
The exhibit is full of haunting, private moments on the early morning track, vivid, colorful, powerfully explosive race-time images and always, no matter the time or place, a strong sense of love for the animals, the people who work with them and the sport itself.
Can’t beat that
“If anybody complains about their first job out of college, well I think I got them beat,” Engelhardt laughed. “I had to collect pee at the city jail. We were testing trying to find out who the drug users were and possibly get them into counseling or a diversion program.”
Eventually he landed the director of the MonDay program to divert probational felony offenders from the state prison system.
For emotional escape, he began making pilgrimages to River Downs with his camera. It brought back memories of long ago.
“When we were kids, my mother shipped us out to her sister in Albany in the summer and that meant we spent our days at Saratoga,” he said.
“My brother, Bob, was going to St. Bonaventure, but during the summers, he and his best buddy from across the street — Johnny Sanchircho — worked as white caps at Saratoga.
“We had a routine. We’d go downtown to Colson’s Newsstand at midnight and wait with the same cast of Damon Runyon characters every night for the trucks to pull up and throw off the Racing Forms.
“Then we’d go home to the kitchen table and Bob gave me assignments. I had to go through the workout sections and find the fastest horses besides the bullet horses — the ones that worked the fastest distance and got a little bullet by their name.
“Bob would get up early the next morning, handicap the races, then go to work. I’d go there late in the morning with Mrs. Sanchircho. White caps weren’t supposed to bet, so I’d go over to Bob, he’d take off his cap and read me his picks from the sheet he had hidden inside. I’d get Johnny’s picks, too, and then I’d take them to Mrs. Sanchircho, she had the bankroll and she’d place the bets.
“Bob made enough one summer to take a trip to Europe. Me, I’d get a chance to walk along side jockeys like Braulio Baeza, Bill Shoemaker and Angel Cordero and then, at the end of the day, I might get a Harry Stevens hot fudge sundae.”
From start to finish
“For each of these pictures I can remember exactly where I was, what I was smelling, who was around, what time of year it was,” Engelhardt said as he hung the last of his photos the other day.
“What I’m hoping to do here is bringing people through a day at the races — from the farm to early morning preparations and the final images of prerace anticipation, then take you through a race and finally, at the end over there, a nice cool bath.”
He nodded toward a photo of Lava Man, a dark bay gelding who was getting bathed in front of a Keeneland barn as steam rose off his back and water dribbled down beneath him. Once a cheap county fair claimer, he became, Engelhardt said, “the modern day Seabiscuit” and won more than $5 million.
There are back stories to many of the photos, but they really aren’t needed. The images — in particular one surreal work entitled “Mare in the Mist” that looks like a painting — are mesmerizing.
And Engelhardt does remember the particulars of each photo:
“With River Downs being right on the (Ohio) River, the early summer mornings come with a dense fog. It’s surreal. It’s like you’re looking into a white cloud and then you hear the hoof beats and the horses breathing hard through those flared nostrils. And then, all of sudden, there’s the figure of this horse and rider.
“Right then, there’s always so much promise in the air.”
As you listen to him, as you see the way his face lights up when he tells the stories and especially when you look at his work, you know why he held so tightly to those things of his childhood.
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