Word: mile-and-a-half
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...Belmont Stakes so thoroughly rated its billing as the "Test of the Champion." Never, in fact, had the classic race hosted the likes of Majestic Prince, the only horse in history to enter the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont undefeated. Going into last week's mile-and-a-half Belmont, the last and longest leg of racing's Triple Crown, the strapping chestnut colt had run and won nine races in a row. Had he won, he would have been the first thoroughbred to take the Triple Crown since Citation turned the trick...
...Derby is a mile-and-a-quarter, the Preakness is a mile-and-three-sixteenths, and the Belmont is a mile-and-a-half. The extra quarter-mile of ground makes a lot of difference...
Longden asserted that the Count's short career as a race horse can be directly attributed to his single effort at a mile-and-a-half, thus justifying scratching Majestic Prince from the Belmont. Perhaps Count Fleet's fifteen races as a two-year-old contributed more to his unsoundness than his six races at three. Longden and Majestic Prince seem to be quitting a Channel swim in full stroke a mile from shore, but they are quitting winners. Anyway everybody knows that Mom, Apple Pie, and Undefeated Triple Crown Winners are just a mirage...
Arts and Letters, a late developing three-year-old, has been trained by a master. Eliot Burch has trained other Belmont Stakes winners (Sword Dancer, Quadrangle), and probably has another in the small but long-striding son of the undefeated Ribot. Bred for the classic mile-and-a-half distance, this horse will finally have a chance to show his class on the long backstretch at Belmont. There will be no tight turns to prevent this horse from reaching his best stride. He should win convincingly. 50 per cent chance...
...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...