view raw text
j REAL TURF SPORT I With Something About Flat Racing on the Greensward in the United States I I By SALVATOR The inauguration of genuine turf sport — | that is to say, flat racing over a turf and not a "skinned" course— in the Chicago ter- j | rain this season at Arlington Park has been : a happy thing. In fact, I can thing of no "new departure" hereabouts in many years I that has afforded so much satisfaction to genuine dyed-in-the-wool lovers of racing for its own sake. I As a spectacle, flat racing on the turf far j surpasses contests on a dirt or "skinned" course. This because the background provided is so much more pleasing to the eye. The living green over which the horses contend and against which they stand out in their circuit of the oval makes such races compare with those over our "regulation" tracks precisely like a painting or print in "full color" does with one in black and white. Moreover, there is a sense of space, freedom and liberty of movement on a turf course like that at Arlington, which a strip of dirt enclosed between an inner and an outer rail does not and cannot give. One of the first criticisms which sportsmen from other lands make of American racing is what they call its "cramped courses," fenced outside and in all the way around and in this way impeding the vision from a full view of the horses during most of the circuit of the track. Did you ever stop to think that, as racing is conducted today on practically all American courses, the spectators really SEE the horses for about a quarter of a mile only? That, however, is the case. Very few races at distances farther than a mile are now given, in comparison with the total number contested. The average distance run is between six and seven furlongs— a humiliating admission, when one gives it even the "once over," but one that the facts compel. In all these sprinting events the start is either made from a chute or else from some point on the back stretch. As a consequence, the forms of the horses are only partially seen, being half hidden by the inner rail of the track. Only when they emerge into the home stretch do they come into unobstructed view — and as they are then coming head-on, they are seen from the angle that in art is known as fore-shortened. They are visible only from in front, and what is visible is only the fore part of the competing animal. While, owing to the crouching seat of the modern jockey, that individual is often invisible, or at best semi-visible, until near the finish. While the turf course at Arlington lies just inside the main or outer "regular" course, and is therefore really "enclosed," it is not railed off. The upper and lower turns are outlined by walls of shrubbery, but once they are rounded the figures of the horses are seen in the clear, as the stretches are indicated only by flags set at intervals to show the riders an imaginary line inside which they must not guide their horses unless they expect disqualification. In very dry wnather dust is sometimes seen rising upon a turf course, but as a rule it is absent and never in any way compares with the cloud which often envelopes fields of horses upon "regulation" tracks. In very wet weather a turf course may become muddy and continuous racing over one in that condition may make the footing very messy. But when only one race a day is contested over the turf there is no chance for anything of that kind. Moreover, if the weather is bad, in order to avoid damaging the course, the American manager who can boast one generally transfers the event to the "regular" track, as its surface, with a few good days, can be brought back to prime condition more readily than a turf course. | j | : I I j "—•"•*""*■•■•"*-■-»-■■--■-■■ »-* I have been asked when and how it came about that while thoroughbreds race over turf all over the world except in America, Canada, Cuba and Mexico, here they race over dirt. It is an interesting question and much investigation would be necessary to settle Jit; also an article much longer than my space here allows me. However, it may be set down briefly, in outline, that originally racing in America followed the pattern set by the then mother country, England, from which it was imported by the colonists before the Revolutionary War. The first full-fledged race course ever laid out in what is now the U. S. A. was one created by | Governor Nicolls in the year 1665 on Hemp- ■ stead Plain, Long Island, New York, which up to that date had been a Dutch colony [known as New Amsterdam, but was taken ■ over by England in 1664. Nicolls was its | first English governor and one of his first known acts of a public character was to lay out a race track at Hempstead Plain, I which he called Newmarket after the great I English course, of which he had been a habitue. This course antedated anything of the | kind in Virginia or Maryland, the great southern centers of the sport in colonial times, as in that part of the country it was long restricted to the so-called straightaway "race paths" where the famous "quarter-horses" of the period "did their stuff." This American Newmarket also had by far i the longest career of any race course in j American history. Racing continued over it I from 1665, the year when it first started, [up to about 1795, or for at least 130 years. j It continued to be used at intervals, however, for about thirty years more, but meanwhile it was remodeled. As originally built it was a two-mile course. As rebuilt, it was but one mile around. In 1825 a new course was built near the famous old one, which was that noted in our | turf history as the Fashion Course. It was j a dirt course one mile around, and the first j of that kind, it is said, in the New York | terrain. In that respect it was modeled after ; the dirt courses that had previously sprung !up in the South. The old Newmarket was I also the last turf course that held over from | the early days, in this country. The Fashion .Course was near by and turf men found j by trying their horses first on one course | and then on the other, that they could i run from three to five seconds faster over j the dirt at Fashion than they could over the I turf at Newmarket, though Cadwallader Colden, the great American turf authority of that time, who had often been abroad, declared the turf at Hempstead Plain was just as good for racing over as that at Newmarket, in England, or the Curragh of Kildare, in Ireland. Owing to the superior speed of the Fashion dirt course, the remodeled Newmarket turf course soon fell into disuse and was finally blotted off the map. It was the last one in the U. S. of its kind until racing over the turf was revived at Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, in the 1880s as a novelty, a course especially for it being built inside the regular nine furlong dirt oval which was for many years the most famous in this country. Later on a turf course was constructed at Hamilton, Ont., also an inner one. Sheepshead passed in 1910 and this left Hamiltons the only turf course in use on this continent until two seasons ago when Mr. J. E. Wid-ener built one inside the main dirt course at Hialeah Park, Miami, and this season Mr. John D. Hertz fathered that at Arlington, having been inspired to do so by the Hialeah model and its marked success. In a subsequent article I may give some comparative figures on the speed of turf vs. dirt courses. They are full of interest.
