Weighing In: Belmont Stakes is Sports Greatest Test Compare Race with Longchamps Grand Prix, Daily Racing Form, 1955-06-11

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Weighing In — — By Evan Shipman ; Belmont Stakes Is Sports Greatest Test Compare Race With Longchamps Grand Prix Nashua May Meet Good One in Untried Jabneh BELMONT PARK, Elmont, L. I., N. Y., June 10.— Here we are again on the eve of another Belmont Stakes, the race that, over the years, has measured the quaut-y oi tne American tnor-oughbred more truly than any other event on our calendar. Because of its exacting mile and a half distance, its conditions imposing scale weight, and the time of year when it is scheduled — a time when the wheat is separated from the chaff — the Belmont has long been acknowledged as the supreme test of three-year-old class, and if it has frequently yielded to other fixtures from the point of view of suspense or excitement, that is simply the penalty we must pay for,isolated excellence. When colts such as Man o War, American Flag, Twenty Grand, War Admiral, Count Fleet and Citation conquered their opposition with superlative ease in the Belmont Stakes, those renewals were memorable not because the issue was ever in any doubt, but because they set the authentic stamp of greatness on colts who were later to become pillars of our native breeding structure. The case is not exactly similar Saturday; Belairs brilliant Nashua will — it is true — stand out over his rivals much as did the great predecessors mentioned above, but Nashua, defeated in a truly run Kentucky Derby by the California colt, Swaps, can lay no claim to the national championship. Swaps will be busy at Hollywood Park Saturday afternoon, where he meets older horses in the Calif ornian.


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1950s/drf1955061101/drf1955061101_64_2
Local Identifier: drf1955061101_64_2
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800