view raw text
| , , Fairmount Park All Set " For Friday Night Opening Broderick and Bennigsen Inspect Improvements at Illinois Course COT.T.TNSVTT.T.E, 111., May 21. — Fair-mount Park was pronounced in order for the spring racing meeting which starts next Friday night, following the week-end tour of inspection by Joseph P. Broderick, secretary of the Illinois Racing Board, and officials of the East Side plant. Accompanying Broderick during his visit here was Ray Bennigsen, a Fairmount director who also is an official at several Chicago thoroughbred tracks. Bennigsen perhaps is equally as well known as head of the Chicago Cardinals professional football club. The pair arrived by plane and were personally conducted by Edwin C. Moon, general manager of Fairmount. Broderick and Bennigsen both said they were impressed with the improvements just finished for the first of two racing meets in 1951. The spring session will continue for 29 days, concluding with the July 4 holiday program. Broderick and Bennigsen were shown the new roof tops added to the grandstand and paddocks, the repainted barns, enclosures to the grandstand, resurfaced parking lot and new clubhouse boxes. The entire plant has been repainted, too. A new and larger totalisator has been installed. Broderick, represented the racing board inasmuch as fellow members were unable to attend. He said chairman Stuyvesantj Peabody, Jr., Frank Warton and William Miller, however, will be on hand later on. Bennigsen said Fairmount followers are in for better racing as a higher-type quality horses will be campaigning here. "Many of the horses which ran at Sportsmans Park and Lincoln Fields in Chicago," he said, "will soon be running at Fairmount." Other Fairmount officials, besides Moon, who. attended the tour and luncheon for press and radio at the Missouri Athletic Club were Willibald Schaefer, track director, racing secretary Jack Klucina and publicity director Jack Van Pelt.
