view raw text
Chase Program Adds Color to Meet At the close of this decidedly pleasant Belmont spring meeting, and recalling the many agreeable afternoons spent in this charming, gracious, park-like atmosphere, we cannot but be aware of the debt that is owing~ to the elaborat through-the-field program sponsored by the association for colorful, intriguing sport. For the past six weeks, the steeplechase and : hurdle horses, and also the flat campaigners on the infield turf course, have added immeasurably to the day-to-day interest of Belmonts racing, going far toward dispelling that monotony inseparable from any prolonged meeting. Belmonts chief appeal must always be to the eye; here, racing must be appreciated as a spectacle, an overall spectacle to which each division can make a valuable contribution. We enjoy the sight of a cluster of well-matched two-year-olds battling down the reaches of the Widener chute, and we enjoy a field of aged campaigners on the sweeping turns of the broad main strip, but for sheer excitement and joy in a good horse and skillful rider, we must yield the palm to steeplechasers taking the big obstacles with the weight up, the jockeys tactics and their mounts bold courage furnishing a dramatic, shifting picture representative of our sport at its best. Devoted as we- are to steeplechasing, we could not but hear with keenest regret that the trainers, by majority vote, have expressed a wish to race this season over Delaware" Parks inner course rather than the severe and exacting but extremely interesting outside course that has, up to now, been employed for that associations two important chasing features, the-George-town and the Indian River. Of recent seasons, fields for both races have been small, the support from owners and trainers not at all commensurate with thes-sociations generosity, or — to speak a plain truth — with the sacrifice involved in featuring this type of race at all. If Delaware Park ;s to remain in the sadly shrinking circuit of major tracks offering through-the-field sport, the association has a right to demand something other than grudging -support. We are well aware that the big jumps in question at Delaware are of a different type than those encountered here at Belmont, at Aqueduct or at Saratoga, but many good horses have been trained to negotiate them safely in the past, and_ there is at present no dearth of good horses.
