Word: tanforan
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Adams of Tola, Kans. led the field in a neck & neck race for the jockey championship of the year. Solemn, sharp-faced Jockey Longden was in front with 222 winners; jolly pink-faced Jockey Adams, last year's champion, close behind with 208. Both were racing at the Tanforan track outside San Francisco, riding six or seven mounts a day, and flying down to Mexico for Sunday racing at Agua Caliente in their attempt to chalk up the most winners by December...
Born in Rockford, Minn., Van Gates was an automobile salesman and occasional racer in San Francisco in 1910, when he saw the French Aeronaut Louis Paulhan thrilling crowds at Tanforan Track. He decided there was money to be made in exhibition flying. For $2,000 he picked up a flimsy biplane built by a Kansas City doctor, took a Swiss aviator as partner. The Swiss looked once, briefly, at the biplane and vanished. Rather than see the machine rot on its wheels, Gates started the engine one day, mounted the rickety seat, started taxiing about the field just...