Belmont Parks Many Different Tracks with Details of Their Directions and Distances, Daily Racing Form, 1918-05-26

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BELMONT PARKS MANY DIFFERENT TRACKS WITH DETAILS OF THEIR DIRECTIONS AND DISTANCES Racing begins tomorrow at Belmont Park. In many respects this is the greatest race track in North America. When the Westchester Racing Association concluded to abandon Morris Park and seek a new home, it selected a big tract of land on Long Island, which is now the site of the present magnificent Belmont Park racing plant. The tract enclosed is of over six hundred acres and is ample to provide space for vast extensions, if it ever comes to be deemed advisable to expand farther. This can readily be understood, when it is reflected that eighty acres is ample space for an ordinary elliptical mile track, with its necessary appurtenances of a grandstand, club house, paddocks, stables and other needed structures. As an example, the local Washington Park track of glorious racing memories, had an enclosure of about eighty-two acres. Having such ample ground to deal with, the Westchester Racing Association laid out an extensive provision of different tracks, embracing a seven-eighths straight course an ellipse called the Belmont course, a big outer track and inside of it a turf course, both for flat racing, then another inner course for steeplcchasing. Appropriate buildings com pleted v/hat was intended to form as a whole, a model racing equipment in all details. This it is and always has been. Belmont Park has always been popular with patrons of racing, but its drawback is that it is not popular with the trainers of horses. This is solely because racing there is done in the reverse way to the usual American method, of racing with the left hands of the jockeys next to the inner rail. As a matter of fact, it makes little, if any, difference to the horses which way they are sent. In England it is about fifty-fifty between right hand and left hand courses. But American trainers were only used to the left hand courses and from the beginning of racing at Belmont Park, have resented being called on to do something there they were not accustomed to elsewhere. One result of this has been that in the past small fields of starters was a characteristic of Belmont Park racing. Probably it will be different this year, because there is no racing in Canada and the eastern horses must race at Belmont Park or cat the expensive oats of idleness. To give its readers a clear vision of the various Belmont Park tracks, Daily Racing Form here presents a diagram showing all their directions and details: ■ AP Or THC — -asS. r7r-»»_ BELMONT PARK. Sf XV U£ -__ HACK AND STtEPLECHASE COURSE // YV ~Se~J~~3~ T— — Oueiiw.itY. // II r ■ Hi / //stua2masjna.VK.mta YvV" — #SS25i _«««_ / / r A? m fsf*«rtl"*i3 on thcwki nkj"-— C-rrT352-*. . t y J 1 1 /// cw«tJ"*b o«« wtsjBBt fi ZT~ -~rg-Zy/ "l?/ W»«l4 H1LES MS TMCWUBt


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1910s/drf1918052601/drf1918052601_1_3
Local Identifier: drf1918052601_1_3
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800