Good Neighbor's Racetrack

To U.S. horsemen, stranded in Florida by the sudden curtailment of Miami's racing season (TIME, Jan. 25), came tempting news last week. Mexico's National Railway offered thoroughbred owners "a sharp reduction" in shipping rates from the border to Mexico City. Reason: on the outskirts of the capital, on land owned by the Mexican Government, workmen are putting the finishing touches on a magnificent new horse park, the Hipodromo de las Americas. When it opens March 6 it will bring back to Mexico a sport that vanished with the Revolution of 1910.

Mexico has never been a great horse-racing country. Though their ancestors saw the first horses ever brought to America (by Cortes in 1519), Mexicans have always preferred bullfighting. In the '80s, when racing reached epidemic proportions in the U.S., Mexicans caught the fever for a while. Mexico City's Condesa race track, which flourished under President Porfirio Diaz, had the pomp of England's royal Ascot.

Responsible for Mexico's racing revival is bustling, 40-year-old Bruno Pagliai, onetime California banker whose past enterprises include two famed Hollywood playgrounds: the Agua Caliente race track (now closed for the duration) and the La Playa Hotel at Ensenada. Undaunted by the fact that several other U.S. citizens had tried, with little success, to revive racing in Mexico, Pagliai got the ear of Wall Street Financier Ben ("Sell 'em-Short") Smith, who had developed an interest in horse racing by taking planeloads of friends to Kentucky Derbies. Assured of Smith's enthusiasm, Pagliai then convinced polo-playing President Manuel Avila Camacho that horse racing would benefit Mexican horse breeding, Good Neighbor relations and tourist trade.

Camacho gave Pagliai not only a license for pari-mutuel gambling but also a ten-year renewable concession on 180 acres of Government property 15 minutes from the heart of Mexico City. In return, Pagliai's Jockey Club de la Ciudad de Mexico, operators of the track, promised the Mexican Army ten thoroughbreds every year there is racing at the Hipodromo de las Americas.

Better for Bettors. The Hipodromo has already cost Pagliai and his associates 7,000,000 pesos (approximately $1,400,000 ). Designed by Manhattan Architect John Sloan, it will out-glamor California's fabulous Santa Anita Park, generally considered the world's most ornamental race track. Snuggling at the foot of the snow-capped Sierra Madre Mountains, Sloan's dream track will have a three-tiered grandstand, four-tiered clubhouse with betting windows and cocktail bars on each level and a super-gaudy ballroom with a black marble floor, silver walls and shell-pink ceiling.

At many U.S. race tracks the clubhouse restaurant faces the paddock so that fans can watch the paddock odds-board while feeding. For the Hipodromo's customers Architect Sloan has shown even more consideration. The club's eight oval bars and four restaurants all face the track so that customers can watch the races as well as the tote board.

By the time the track opens, Promoter Pagliai hopes every one of its 800 stalls will be filled. Last week 300 horses were already trying out its racing strip -- including nine owned by President Camacho, eight owned by Governor Barba Gonzalez of Jalisco, scores of U.S. racers recently imported from California by Mexican bigwigs. Even ex-President Lazaro Cardenas, who once banned all gambling in Mexico (except the National Lottery), is contemplating a racing stable.

Tempting though this new market is, many U.S. horsemen are reluctant to ship their strings to Mexico City because of its high altitude (7,300 ft. above sea level). U.S. trainers already there maintain that their horses eat well, run well and sweat less in the rarefied air.

Up to last week no reservation had been made for Whirlaway, the horse Promoter Pagliai wants above all for the Hipodromo's biggest race: The May 30 Handicap de las Americas, worth 100,000 pesos to the winner.

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