Overlay by Barry N. Malzberg

Author:Barry N. Malzberg [Malzberg, Barry N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575102286
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-29T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

The Belmont. The Belmont is one of America’s oldest horse races and certainly her most respected. Three year olds (fillies are rarely entered, however, it is too testing for their delicate limbs, their oft menstruating pudenda) are asked to run a mile and a half under scale weight of one hundred and twenty six pounds, the longest distance that any of them have ever raced and a good piece longer than all but the best of them will ever be asked to race again. The only American race run at the classic European distance of a mile and a half, it is important not only to trainers and horsemen, but to breeders who feel that the combination of speed and stamina which appears in the ultimate winner makes him far more desirable than any of the winners of other major stakes races at stud. If he has won any of the other races as well, of course, so much the better. A winner of the Belmont, in any event, can have his stud fees nearly doubled from whatever they would have otherwise been. With the tendency of good horses to break down earlier and earlier in these times (because of the financial pressures to race them too early too often) and the virtual failure of any good horse to run past the age of five or six, the winner of the Belmont is usually considered to be the most valuable stud prospect in his given age group and usually goes on toward a long and successful career of copulation and its consequences. Modern famous sires such as Prince Graustark or Son Excellence can make as much as twenty thousand dollars for a single service to a mare in heat.

Run continuously at Belmont until the early 1960’s, the race was switched to Aqueduct in 1962 because the imminent collapse of Belmont’s grandstand forced authorities to condemn the track. Belmont was subsequently rebuilt at a cost to state and horseplayer of several million dollars and the race was switched back to its natural terrain in 1968. There, restored to the felicity of its origin, it appeared to be set through at least the end of the century.

However, in 1972, there occurred at Belmont the famous riots following the Third Religious Revival held at that track during the winter. The first two revivals had been enormously successful and had succeeded in turning over to the New York Racing Association, as fifteen percent of all collections, several hundred thousand dollars. Who was to suspect that fanatics or their satellites went crazy in the cold? But by then it was too late. The race was thus again shifted to Aqueduct where it has been run ever since, to the dissatisfaction of many sentimentalists who only grudgingly have accepted reality. Two renovations within less than two decades were beyond the means of the state during the Welfare Decade.

The arson of 1973 completely destroyed the clubhouse and paddock areas of the abandoned track and the Racing

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