Memories & Moola

Everyone agreed that it was nice to be back at Saratoga, N.Y., the nation's most picturesque race track. Everything looked just as it did before the war, except where the venerable United States Hotel used to stand. There was a parking lot there now.

Horse racing first came to Saratoga the summer Grant began his final drive into Virginia. It had been there every summer since, was there the year (1885) old U.S. Grant died in a cottage near Saratoga.

Last week, after a three-year lapse, it was back for a 24-day stay at the upstate New York spa, with Whitneys and Vanderbilts in the boxes, touts and bookies in the corner of every hotel lobby, and some of the nation's best horses--Stymie, Gallorette, I Will, First Fiddle, Assault--in the paddocks and on the track.

A lot of smart money thought that this would be Saratoga's last season. The heavy betting tax (state and county total: 16%) and Saratoga's inaccessibility (180 miles from New York City) were expected to drive fans to the new Atlantic City track, also in full swing last week. The wise money was wrong.

Last week at Saratoga a record opening-day crowd of 15,168--2 1/2 times the previous record--put $750,806 through the mutuels. On the first Saturday, Saratoga had its first million-dollar handle in history.

At Goshen, N.Y., long the mecca of harness horsemen, the Hambletonian had its 21st renewal. Winner: a bay colt named Chestertown, bought the week before the race by Walter E. Smith, a rags-to-riches West Coast industrialist turned harness-racing promoter. Driver: grizzled, 72-year-old Tom Berry, who had broken two ribs and his wrist in a spill two days earlier.

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