The crack of dawn was real last week at Sportsman`s Park, not merely an image. The temperatures were only a nose, a neck or a head in front of zero on most mornings, and the life of a thoroughbred horseman was dominated from sunup by a vicious whip-sting from the weather.
The air steamed in the barn area from a bevy of horses snorting, from the yells and hurried curses of cold riders, from grooms who cool down the taut nerves of their supercharged animals by patiently walking them in a circle that makes the barns a living merry-go-round, from the dogs, goats and cats who turn the barns into a menagerie of menace for careless strangers.
What an exotic community is bunched and burrowed into a corner of Cicero, where life is constantly regenerated by fresh horses and money.
For the first seven weeks of the new year, the thoroughbreds have been on vacation in Chicago. They go back to work next Monday afternoon at Sportsman`s, with a 79-day meeting scheduled to open a season that will show how well the Chicago area can handle the absence of Arlington Park.
Many horsemen are anxious about the schedule that has them racing at Sportsman`s, then adjacent Hawthorne all the way to Oct. 11, before the campaign ends at Balmoral Park.
Arlington will have a mini-meet Aug. 18 to Sept. 1, but if it doesn`t rise from the ashes of its fire in the near future, the area could lose quality horsemen and horses to other states.
”This area needs Arlington, and without it the competition won`t be as good and won`t be as strong,” said Michele Boyce. She and her husband, Neil, train one of the most distinguished stables now housed at Sportsman`s.
”Sportsman`s and Hawthorne are good to horsemen and are good tracks, but we need a different atmosphere in the middle of a season than they can provide with their city environment. Pollution`s a problem here.
”More horses bleed at Sportsman`s and Hawthorne than did at Arlington. A reason for that has to be the air. With the factories, it`s tough for a horse to breathe properly.”
Freezing temperatures aren`t nearly as hard on horses as heat, and appetites are especially vast now. In the freshening period of recent weeks, they have had stomachs wormed and teeth checked and ankles tightened with blistering.
”Horses need this mental readjustment, and they`ll come back stronger,” said Michele Boyce. ”Fillies seem to get a lot more from it. They have a tendency to be more nervous than colts, and they benefit from being turned out, getting away from the track to a farm.
”Just getting to Arlington helped the horses. People need a break, too. This month starts nine months that we`ll be living and racing in the same area.
”We have fun and good racing at these tracks, but there`s no way Hawthorne`s going to attract the quality of horses that came to Arlington every summer.
”Neil figures a horse must earn about $15,000 a year before he starts to pay for himself and an owner starts to get profits. Our fear is that if the competitive quality goes down, the horse community at Hawthorne won`t give our stable the kind of competition it needs, won`t be big enough to fill the races that must be filled for us to win money.
”Once Hawthorne ends, we`ll leave the state and race at New Orleans or Santa Anita or Florida. Balmoral doesn`t fit our plans. We raced there before. It`s something you put up with if you can`t afford to race somewhere else.”
Sportsman`s received high grades from trainers for the shape of the track in recent weeks. At times freezing weather has clumped the dirt and forced it shut while crews loosened the clods, but the persistent maintenance has been good.
”Winter training here is excellent,” said trainer Wayne Catalano, formerly a successful jockey. ”It`s not different than anytime really, except there are no baths for horses, and you try to keep up with clipping their hair. They get sick if sweat collects under long hair.
”I`m ready to race 15 head. After this kind of layoff, you get anxious. And the year looks real interesting to me. What will happen without Arlington? ”That was the class of racing in the Midwest. Looks tough without them. It won`t bother me a whole bunch to race from February to October at Hawthorne and Sportsman`s. Good places. But the need for Arlington is there, and it`ll really be interesting to see what the state can do without it.”
