Saratoga Horse Racing Tickets Continued
Saratoga Horse Racing has given the Saratoga Race Course
two well-known nicknames - "The Spa" and "The Graveyard of
Champions", for the upsets that have occurred there. Man O' War
suffered his only defeat in 21 starts while racing at Saratoga;
Secretariat was defeated at Saratoga by Onion after he (Secretariat)
had won the Triple Crown; and U.S. Triple Crown champion Gallant Fox
was beaten by a 100-1 longshot named "Jim Dandy" in the 1930 Travers
Stakes.
As is the case with the other two tracks operated by the New York
Racing Association - Aqueduct and Belmont Park - there are three
separate courses at Saratoga: a main dirt track, which, like that at
Aqueduct, has a 1 1/8 mile (1,811 m) circumference; an outer turf
course (known officially as the Mellon Turf Course, in honor of the
Mellon family, whose members include former United States Treasury
Secretary Andrew Mellon and has a long history of involvement with
horse racing), which is 1 mile plus 98 feet long; and an inner turf
course, the circumference of which is 26 feet (7.9 m) shorter than 7�?�½
furlongs (1,509 m). Steeplechase races are also run at Saratoga
Horse Racing and may take place on either of the aforementioned
turf courses, depending on the distance of the race.
A former distinctive feature of Saratoga's dirt track was the
Wilson Mile chute, which branched off from the clubhouse (first) turn
at a 90 degree angle. After the 1971 meeting, its use was suspended;
following a brief resumption during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
it was dismantled, leaving no distance available for dirt races
between 7 furlongs and 1 1/8 miles (1,408 and 1,811 m). A
similarly-designed chute is still in use at Ellis Park, a racetrack
in Kentucky, and is the only such chute of its kind that can be found
at any North American track today.
