view raw text
SHEEPSHEAD TRACK IMPROVEMENTS. Track To Be Eleven Furlongs Long Stands To Be Enlarged. New York, September 14. Contracts were let recently for the improvements planned at Sheepshead Bay and work on the reconstruction of ine course will begin next Monday. .Superintendent Frank Clark will have direct charge of the work and will push it with all possible dispatch in order that everything may he completed for the opening of the spring meeting next year. Mr. Clark thinks that with anything like good weather the work of rebuilding and extending the track can be accomplished by January 1, and It will then have almost six months in which to settle. It has been definitely decided to make the track one mile and three furlongs in circumference and races at one mile and a half will bo run around one turn. The work will necessitate the moving of several tarns on the backstretch and on the turn, but these will not bo disturbed until after the racing season has ended, though the work will not suffer in tiio meantime. After completing the improvements to the track proper, Mr. Clark will devote his energies to remodeling the grandstand, or at least that portion of it next to the clubhouse. All of the upper end will be made into a members stand, with boxes in the lower tier as well as in the tier above. The main body of the stand will undergo no change. By turning the clubhouse end of the stand into a members stand, owners and trainers, who have always made this section their rendezvous during the running of a race, will be at a disadvantage unless amide provision is made for them elsewhere. This should and will no donbt be done, as it is up to the association to provide a good point of vantage for the men who are kept in the paddock by their duties until the horses go to the post, and for whom a stand convenient to the paddock but at the same time so placed that the tralneis may see all the incidents of the running of the race, should be provided.