Word: belmonts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...turfmen, Belmont Park-just over the New York City boundary in Long Island's Nassau County-has always been a track apart. Not that the 63-year-old park is all that venerable; Saratoga is 41 years its senior. True, it is the setting for some of the most prestigious U.S. races, including the Belmont Stakes, traditionally the third gem in the Triple Crown. But what made Belmont really special was that society's horsemen built it to their own specifications. So overwhelming was the track's mood of genteel opulence that it even awed...
...Belmont attracted the top thorough bred champions, even in the days when the track insisted on its English accent and ran races "the wrong way" (clockwise, in the British fashion). This quirk was not abandoned until 1920, the historic year that Man o' War, fighting for his head all the way, won the Belmont Stakes by 20 lengths and set a world's record. But for the past six years, while a new $30.7 million grandstand was being built, Belmont has existed only as a practice track, and its classic races have been run elsewhere. The worrisome question...
Mighty Oval. The verdict from the 42,080 opening-day crowd was prompt and affirmative. "It still has its old familiar charm," declared George D. Widener, 79, who has raced his colors at Belmont since 1913. "Beautiful," sighed Mrs. Winston ("Ceezee") Guest. "Bigger and better than ever," said Jockey Club Chairman Ogden Phipps...
There was, in fact, one vast improvement on the old: a four-level, cantilevered viewing stand, rising as high as a ten-story building and stretching a quarter of a mile. The best of Belmont has been retained and refurbished, including the paddock sheltered by a well-trussed, 140-year-old white pine. The new grandstand quarters for the exclusive Turf and Field Club would have been approved by the track's namesake, August Belmont (ne Schonberg), who once declared: "Racing is for the rich...
...celebrate Belmont's reopening, the noted poet and racing devotee, Classicist Rolfe Humphries, 73, set down his own memory parade in verse (first printed below). With the horses running once again on Belmont's wide-sweeping mile-and-a-half oval, the longest in the U.S., even the jockeys and trainers were cheering. "Now we've got all the big races back where they belong," said Owner-Trainer E. Barry Ryan. "It's great to be home again...