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; . . ; ; . WISE WAYS REACHES AURORA Mile Record in Danger Despite Make-Over of Track With Addition of New Top Soil. When track superintendent Placide Frig erio worked 30,000 cubic yards of new top-soil into the Aurora racing strip last summer, with the idea of transforming it from a "pasteboard" race track to one that would be easier upon the delicate hoofs and legs of the thoroughbreds racing over it, he felt certain that no new records would be set at the 1936 meeting Because of the hard racing surface that formerly prevailed, Auroras time records are very fast faster than those of most American race courses. But when owner G. R. Allen unloaded his good five-year-old, Wise Ways, at the Fox Valley course yesterday, Frigerio began to have his doubts. He now feels that one record the mile mark is very likely to fall before the nineteen-day Aurora meeting ends in the 2,000 Illinois Derby on May 22. The reason is that Wise Ways has run the mile distance faster than any horse now racing, and only Equipoise has done better than the mark of 1:34 which Wise Ways hung up two years ago at Lincoln Fields. Equipoise holds the worlds record of 1:34 for a mile around turns, and in the history of the turf no other horse has ever stepped the distance faster than l:344i. Three horses have done that Roamer against time at Saratoga in 1918, Jamestown in competition at Arlington Park in 1932, and Wise Ways. The present record for one mile at Aurora is 1:38, and was set in 1929 by Thistle Fyrn. It has not been broken because at recent meetings there have been no races run at one mile. But racing secretary Dick Leigh expects to program at least one race for the better class of horses at that distance during the meeting, for it annoys him each time he runs an eye down the list of Aurora track records and finds how slow the Fox Valley record is. A record of 1:38 for a mile is what racing men call trotting horse time. The difficulty in staging a mile race at Aurora arises from the fact that the finish line at the track is much closer to the club house turn than at any other race course. To run a mile, horses woulid be required to start very close to the turn, and because a field of thoroughbreds requires some distance to straighten itself out after the start, Leigh has always been afraid that the field in a mile race might pile itself up, with spills and injuries to the riders as a possible result. A possible way out of the difficulty would be to start the race at the eighth pole and to make the finish there. This would necessitate moving the placing judges to the eighth pole to catch the finish of the race, but Leigh is so anxious to see a new mile record set at the Aurora track that he i3 expected to apply to the Illinois Racing Commission for permission to stage such a finish.
