view raw text
BETWEEN RACES By Oscar Otis Count Fleet Sire of Stake Winner FastDrying Garden State Strip Steel Inner Rail Safety Factor Track Technically Without Cushion CushionGARDEN GARDEN STATE PARK Camden N J May 19 Horses and People Murals in the stable cafeteria here are of the same size and quality as adorn the clubhouse It often has been said that there is no thrill in all racing like the breeding and racing of a stakes winner and we supposed it could be added there is a lot of satisfaction in estab ¬ lishing a good race horse as a sire When Our Fleet won the Frizette at Jamaica not long ago Count Fleet entered the roster of sires of stakes winners with his first crop John D Hertz is in the rare and happy position of being able to offer at stud two full brothers of merit in two widely separated areas Count Fleet in Kentucky and Count Speed in California Frankly most Californians do not know Count Fleet as an individual rather by reputation but the rush to the book of Count Speed indicates they are quite sold on his not so well known brother because they have seen him run and in world record time In fact there are some who insist that Count Speed will turn out so well that Hertz will find it desirable to send him back to Kentucky for a spell and perhaps transfer Count Fleet to his Amarillo Ranch in the San Fernando Val ¬ ley on an exchange basis Hertz is a deep student of bloodlines and breeding and we dare say that if Count Fleet and Count Speed transmit the class and durability of the defunct Reigh Count who is always submitted as a candidate in discussions on the best American horse a new dynasty on the turf may be in the making makingA A A One of the more refreshing points about Garden State Park is the universal and unsolicited acclaim of all hands from horsemen to jockey agents of the velvet of the racing strip and its fast drying qual ¬ ities Here are a few items about Garden State that help make it that way The course did not attain its current qualities from nature but rather they are man made And the man responsible is Ed Ellis a former contractor and a member of the Garden State board of directors When the track first opened there were 27 straight days of rain and the strip was a quagmire to put it mildly Ellis struck out boldly to rectify the trouble and disregarded all preconceived notions about how a track should be built He proceeded first to drain the property Next he discarded the old footing and put in a base of slag of a foot thick Slag is quite porus and weighs only about 2000 pounds per cubic yard as against 2700 for the native stone here ¬ abouts The topsoil mixed to the same texture throughout was spread over this and a concrete curb built along the inside rail to prevent undue loss of sod due to erosion during rains There hasnt been a complaint of serious nature since sinceA A A A AThe The inner rail at Garden State is steel not wood It is painted white and looks like wood but it isnt The fence posts bowed into an arc also are of steel and are imbedded in the aforementioned con ¬ crete retaining wall A horses feet actual ¬ ly can run under the inner rail or at least the port side of him All hands agree that this is an added safety for b6th horse and rider A horse cant break the fence run through it or otherwise damage it Conversely a horse will skid or bounce off the rail without injury which might occur should he crash the fence The steel posts also give an abided margin of safety to the pilot in the matter of rolling under the fence and out of harms way in the case of a spill For a comparative newcomer to racing Ellis has carried his modern ideas over into the field of human relationships in a remarkable manner He engineered a hot water system for all barns doing away with the hazardous fires between the barns to warm water He designed a new type tack room which will be built at an early date complete with hot running water and heat The idea is to make the living quarters of the grooms in effect apartments with most of the conveniences and comforts of home One such experi ¬ mental unit has been built at a cost of 10000 but it will not serve as a model for future building because it has some bugs You might also be interested to know that Ellis insists that technically there is no cushion at Garden State The soil at the top is the same as that overlaying the slag He also insists the secret of a safe track is having the foundation and top surface soil of the same texture everywhere We have heard of holes in tracks from time to time explains Ellis and that word is a bit too literal to truly describe it A hole is nothing more or less than a spot or area in the track softer than the sur ¬ rounding area A horse stepping into it finds his feet going down further After a lot of experimentation with the original clay base here at Garden State we decided that holes were caused mainly by varia ¬ tions in the base Our foundation of slag has cured that
