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Expect Detroit Course To Have Biggest Season Inaugurates 1953 Michigan Racing Season This Thursday DETROIT, Mich.. May 25.— Horse racing returns to Michigan at the Detroit Race Course Thursday for a season which appears set to smash every existing attendance and betteing record and which is certain to see the biggest single race in state history. The big race is the 0,000 Michigan Mile, on July 25, an event which already has drawn nominations from such crack handicap stars at Hill Gail, Oil Capitol, Money Broker, Crafty Admiral. Sickles Image and many others. As for general trends, the Detroit Race Course is opening its gates at a time when racing across the nation is on a 1953 upsurge that is 12 per cent above the 1952 figures. With that in the background, the Michigan mile track has strengthened its own promotion this season by returning stakes races to the program after several years lapse. The first of these is the F. M. Alger Memorial on May 30, with a purse of 0.-000 added — and a sign of interest in it is 32 nominations have been received. Also awaiting the opening-day crowds is the inspection of a 0,000 paint job which has turned the five-million-dollar plant at Schoolcraft and Middlebelt roads in Livonia into a handsome green-brown-red stadium. Ready for a premier is a new film patrol system wherein every step of every race is pictured by movie cameras grinding from five 42-foot towers around the track. The stewards can view the pictures within five minutes after the finish of a race — before they rule on protests. Records under siege are the 01,788 daily betting average that was set in 1952 and the 11.660 average attendance of 1952. The biggest crowd on record was 29.570 on May 30. 1952.
