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: : Give Track Super Credit for Marks Much Finer Racing Strips Not Better Horses, Bring Flood of Recent Records By LEON RASMUS SEN Staff Correspondent LOS ANGELES, Calif., May 31.— Everything is wrong. Regarding this rash of new track, American and world records, I mean. Theyre crediting them to the horses instead of the track superintendents. Records are being broken faster than dishes in an old Mack Sennett comedy. A housewife with soapy fingers couldnt cause more havoc. Sure, records are made to be broken, and the tracks, the way they are massaged, manicured and manipulate are just the ones to do it. So long as the horses dont break along with the records, I guess it must be all right. If the horsemen dont complain, why should any, of us outsiders? However, that dossnt alter the fact that we should never confuse the "improving of the breed" with the "improving of the tracks." Whats being proved? Nothing when you get right down to it. But evidently fast times and new records are great grist for the publicity mills. Far western tracks made mountains out of molehills with their Indianapolis Speedway times, and now the eastern and midwestern ovals have picked up the gonfalon. Theyre not going to be caught with their times down. Comparison of Bolero, Questionnaire But getting back to crediting or debiting the track supers, it should be done unless you really believe the breed has improved so much that: Bolero, when he ran six furlongs in 1:08% at Golden Gate, was 20 lengths better than Questionnaire when he won the Paumonok from Hi-Jack in 1932, that El Drag, on last May 21, was 10 lengths faster than Rosenben was at Belmont Park back in 1906, that Citation, age five and far from his best, was 11 lengths better at a mile than Count Fleet was, at his peak, in his brilliant Champagne triumph of 1942. Also that Poona II., last winter at Santa Anita, was 21 lengths better than was Grey Lag when the latter won "the Excelsior Handicap in 1923, that Noor on the day he set a world record for a mile and an eighth was, actually, 18 lengths a better horse than Stymie on the day the latter beat Gallorette in the Edgemere in 1946, that Fleet Bird when he ran a mile and three-sixteenths in 1:52% was 20 lengths quicker than Assault when he won the Butler in 1947 in one of the greatest handicaps of all time, or 27 lengths superior to Tom Fool when he won the Empire City in 1952, etc., etc. Its too bad the horses cant be asked what they think about it. I know when I was a barefoot kid and used to run for the sheer joy of running, I used to like to feel a little softness, a little "give" underfoot. Well, that was a long time ago, and time marches on and the records go by the boards like sheep cn a. sleepless night.
