Thursday began like any other fall day at Saratoga's Oklahoma Training Track. The break in the usual routine didn't occur until the morning's gallops and breezes slowed more than an hour early. The special accommodation was made to allow the tight-knit backstretch community to say goodbye to one of its own.

“Everybody knew Frankie and we loved him," retired jockey Robbie Davis said.

 “You want to know something? He was everybody’s close friend,” said Richie Pruden, a member of NYRA’s maintenance crew for the past 16 years. “His heart was as big as this whole track."

A native of Saratoga Springs, Frankie Fodera worked for the New York Racing Association for more than 30 years; first as a flower planter on the maintenance crew, and more recently as the driver of the equine ambulance.

“There’s nobody better on that than him, and there never will be," Pruden said.

“He picked up lame horses off the track with the horse ambulance, and I told him he had the hardest job on the racetrack," Davis said.

On Friday, less than a week after the close of racing season, the 64-year-old Fodera died in a motorcycle accident near Bolton Landing.

"To not see him on Saturday morning, I didn’t know why, that was shocking,” said Barbara Livingston, a longtime photographer with the Daily Racing Form. “To learn why was unbelievable."

“I had just talked to him a day before, and it was just a real shock,” Davis said.

“It was unbelievable,” Pruden said. “The only thing you can hope for is maybe they were wrong.”

After a memorial service at St. Clement's Church, hundreds of loyal friends lined the main road through the backstretch, as two outriders on horseback led Fodera's hearse on one last journey through Saratoga's historic barn area.

“We wanted to make sure that his family and anyone else who knew them understood how many people loved him," Livingston said.

"Frank Fodera was a wonderful man who did an exceptional job at NYRA for more than 31 years," said NYRA VP of Operations Glen Kozak. "His loss will be felt deeply among all who worked with Frankie at Saratoga Race Course."

Large in stature and personality, Fodera's presence will be felt for many years to come, according to friends.

"We won’t be able to replace this guy,” said Davis, who used to go fishing with Fodera. “This guy was an unbelievable person."

"We are all going to be heartbroken,” Pruden said. “I really don’t think it’s going to set until opening day next year, when he’s not going to be there. That’s going to be the hard part.”