Baser Belmont

Long Island's Belmont Park, long known as the Newmarket of America, last week tried to become the Longchamps of America too. As an accessory to the $5,000 Fashion Stakes (opening-day feature for two-year-old fillies), President Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt set up a runway on a balcony cafe overlooking the paddock, got ten Manhattan smartshops to send clotheshorses to parade between races.

For jaded clubhouse patrons ($4 admission) and the exclusive Turf & Field Club members (who sit apart in a sort of royal enclosure), the mannequins were a fine aperitif. But they meant nothing to 15,000 racing fans who jampacked Belmont's grandstands. Far more exciting to them were two other innovations sponsored by Belmont's democratic young president: 1) free bus transportation from the Long Island end of New York's Independent subway line; 2) a tryout of the Daily Double (combined betting on the first and second races of the day's card), a workingman's dream of turning $2 into a four-door sedan.

For two days the Daily Double payoffs (a separate pool calculated like any other pari-mutuel payoff) were puny. Then on the third day 31 punters, lucky enough to have tickets on War Melody and Early Settler, got $881.70 apiece for their $2 investment.* Said Belmont's Pari-Mutuel Manager Mort Mahony: "So far none of Belmont's bettors have been extravagant

* Largest Daily Double ever paid off in the U. S.: $10,772 (for $2), won by an Illinois poolroom operator at Chicago's Washington Park two years ago.

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