For all significant changes at Monmouth Park over the past 50 years, has remained a constant value over time.
Gatha “Gate” Artis remained on watch at 5:10 a.m. daily during the live meeting to monitor the horses in action. This summer is his 50th year as a clockworker at Monmouth Park, and for a man marking the time of his life, he still can’t believe that half a century has passed how quickly it goes by.
“Looks like I just started yesterday,” he said. “I guess that’s when you love your job.”
The 70-year-old Artis first appeared at Monmouth Park in 1972, shortly after graduating from Penn State with a business degree. He tried to be an accountant but found the attraction of the racetrack too strong to resist.
He is considered one of the best in the business now.
Monmouth Parks Superintendent Bill Anderson said: “I am not aware of a horse that has been captured by him. “He knows the sign of the horse. He’s the best watchman I know.”
Artis didn’t simply adapt to changes in business, he was the creator behind translating exercises and identifying signs into computers in the early 1980s.
“I studied a little bit about computers in college and to be honest, I got tired of writing everything down on sticky notes,” he said. “So I came up with a way to transfer everything to the computer. Now everyone does. But it’s something that nobody did when I first started.”
The key to identifying horses during training, he says, starts with the heel. There’s no advance notice about the horses that will work, or how many, on a given day, so being able to identify horses just by appearance is a fundamental part of the job.
“That’s where you have to look first – the heel,” he said. “On the choroids of the feet, sometimes they’re white, sometimes they’re nothing, but every horse’s foot is different and you have to realize that. After looking at the foot, you move up the torso and the head. horses. But if you don’t start with legs, you’ll be stoned. They all have different legs.”
Artis, who began tracking with his cousin at Green Mountain in Vermont as a teenager, also acted as a mentor during the horse-selling process, “following horses like I do training.”
“I consider myself pretty good at watching a horse move and picking out horses,” he says.
The biggest change he’s noticed from his vantage point is the way the horse trainers operate. Thirty years ago, horse trainers would work with horses at a height of one mile or six hairs. Today, he says, it’s all three-eighths of a mile or half a mile. That and the reluctance of modern trainers to work with horses in stables are the biggest differences Artis has seen.
He’s also changed over time, moving from a handheld stopwatch he’s been using for years to a more high-tech device that now records workouts in a hundredth of a second. .
And he’s still one of the best at the job.
“The Monmouth Park watch team over the years has always been the best, most accurate and most reliable,” said Brad Thomas, Monmouth Park approver, and morning odds creator.
Artis said three horses stand out above all he’s watched over the years: Holy Bull, Skip Away, and a mare named Red Cross, who has won 13 of her 19 careers. started in the mid 70’s.
“Skip Away is probably my favorite horse to watch,” he said. “He’s an iron horse. He never misses a day at the racecourse. He’s there every day, all the time, either working or galloping.”
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