101-Year-Old Racing Fan Makes Triumphant Return to Saratoga
Photo of Sally Sells provided by Erika Austin..
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Sally Sells has seen and done it all. As a Pan Am employee, she flew across the Atlantic with none other than Charles Lindbergh (more on that story later). After seeing the world as a stewardess, she settled down and launched her own travel agency in 1963. But today, the one place Sells really wants to visit is the Saratoga Race Course.
“This will be going down memory lane for me and I’m truly looking forward to it,” Sells told Saratoga TODAY about her upcoming trip to the Spa.
Sells, a lifelong horseracing fan, said she last visited the historic track about 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, a couple of her friends are bringing her back to Saratoga, both because returning to the Spa has long been on Sells’ bucket list, and because she’s hoping to catch a glimpse of Reputation, a horse she co-owns via MyRacehorse. (Reputation won the Tyson Gilpin Stakes at Colonial Downs on Aug. 9 and may be headed to Saratoga next.)
“To own even a minor share in this horse has been an exciting adventure for me,” Sells said.
The former world traveler first saw horse races when she was only five. “My mother said I could read the racing form before I could read ‘Dick and Jane’ in kindergarten,” she said. As a child, Sells would scan the forms, studying horses’ pedigree and past performances, before then taking a trip to the paddock to eyeball them in person. Her passion for the sport has stayed with her for 96 years. “My interest in horse racing and breeding and so forth never waned,” she said.
As for her flight with Lindbergh, Sells once recalled the story to the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). Many years ago, she was chosen by Pan Am to train stewards for international flights. “We had to ferry an empty plane to Germany,” Sells told IWF. “There was a pilot and a crew but only one passenger…There was no one in this giant aircraft but Charles Lindbergh and me. I sat next to him, and we had dinner together, in this big, big old airplane. It was a wonderful moment. That was one of the most exciting things in my life, that I flew the Atlantic with Lindbergh.”
Though perhaps not quite as memorable as a flight with Lindbergh, Sells will travel from Philadelphia to Saratoga on Friday with her friends, finally achieving a long-held dream.