It was at Havre de Grace, the late Sam Riddle used to say, that Man o’ War ran his greatest race. That was in 1920, when Riddle’s Big Red, carrying the heaviest weight he had ever been made to carry (138 Ibs.), ran away with the Potomac Handicap in his usual styleand set a new track record for the mile-and-a-sixteenth while he was about it. Man o’ War was in his heyday that year, and so was Havre de Grace. Halfway between Philadelphia and Washington, “the Graw”* drew crowds from 100 miles or more away, north & south.
It was a pleasant time, before such modern conveniences as electrified tote boards and raucous public address systems. If a racegoer had no special interest in placing a bet at the moment, he could wander down to the stable area along the Susquehanna, watch such thoroughbreds as Exterminator or Sir Barton grazing under the trees. After the races there was the leisurely ride home, or perhaps a turn at the roulette wheel or dice table in what was apt to be, in race season, a relaxed and hospitable town.
In recent years, though the clubhouse and grandstand look a little cramped and shabby compared to modern plants, the Graw has still offered good racing; in 1947 Citation ran and won the first race of his career there. But competition from Delaware Park and New Jersey’s Garden State was already drawing customers away. By 1949, to keep from going deep in the red, Havre de Grace was forced to turn over some of its allotted racing days to Pimlico.
By last week the bookkeeping problem had become too much. For $1,800,000, Havre de Grace’s owners sold out to agents for two other Maryland tracks: Alfred Vanderbilt’s Pimlico and Morris Schapiro’s Laurel Park. The new owners plan to shut down the old place, take over most of the racing days once allotted to the Graw.
* Race-track French. Havre de Grace (Harbor of Grace) got its name during the American Revolution, when the Marquis de Lafayette decided that the setting, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, reminded him of France’s Le Havre.
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