Word: turfmen
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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...
...Native Dancer that the dopesters were anxiously watching. Both horses did everything that was asked of them: Citation became the first to win more than $1,000,000 racing, and Native Dancer won 21 races in 22 starts (sole loss: the Kentucky Derby). But sentimental turfmen still agreed that neither was the equal...
Social Fixture. A Saratoga fixture since 1917, the annual yearling sale is a major social event for the horsy set draws many foreign breeders and such urbane U.S. turfmen as Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, C. V. Whitney and George D. Widener. But among the pavilion crowd last week were also trainers, curious tourists and nervous $2 bettors hungry for a potential thoroughbred of their own. Clutching handbooks that detailed the bloodlines of each horse, they prowled the cluster of well-maintained barns, while grooms obligingly paraded the 267 sleek yearlings for inspection. Most drew only a cursory glance. But others...
...Turfmen knowingly call it class. Sportswriters fondly call it heart. Whatever it is, it is the indefinable quality that is the hallmark of a great competitor. This year it has spurred a little, long-tailed brown colt named Carry Back into outrunning the limited promise of his unimpressive pedigree. With victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness behind him and capable Jockey Johnny Sellers in his saddle, Carry Back will parade to the post for the $125,000 Belmont Stakes this week, an odds-on favorite to become the first thoroughbred in 13 years to win U.S. racing...
...Nasturtium. Bought by Aste as a yearling for $4,300, Nasturtium bloomed into the best two-year-old race horse of 1901. "The bluebloods must have got worried," Aste related with relish, decades later: "A bootblack with a champion!" William C. Whitney, one of that period's great turfmen, wanted to buy Nasturtium. Aste demanded a price then considered outrageous-$50,000-and set a deadline of noon the next Saturday when this offer would be withdrawn...