Atlantic City a New Jersey track with many Glory Days

Atlantic City Race Course's end has finally come. Greenwood ACRA, which had been conducting full-card simulcasting and six-day spring meets consisting of all-turf racing at the track in recent years, announced Friday that the entire facility would cease operating on January 16.

While most people around today will remember the track for these brief meets, or for the identity it forged in the mid-1970s as a venue for night racing with generally low-level fare, I prefer to admire Atlantic City for what it was intended to be and what it was for the first three decades of its existance: one of the leading Thoroughbred racetracks on the East Coast.

Opened in 1946, Atlantic City was once the third cog in the highly successful New Jersey circuit. In the 1950s and 1960s, Garden State Park, Monmouth Park and Atlantic City generally raced 50-60 days each, with Atlantic City's allotment covering dates from mid-August through mid-October.

There was also an unofficial "Philadelphia circuit" that catered to racing fans from that extended metropolis at a time when the state of Pennsylvania had no pari-mutuel wagering on Thoroughbreds. That consisted of racing at Garden State, Delaware Park, and Atlantic City, with no overlap among the three tracks.

Atlantic City jumped early on the rising tide of turf racing by inaugurating the United Nations Handicap in 1953, a 1 3/16-mile test that was an immediate success due to its lucrative (at the time) $100,000 purse and it being held on a spacious, lush one-mile course.

Another important grass race at Atlantic City was the Kelly-Olympic Handicap, the main local prep for the United Nations. It honored track president Jack Kelly, a former Olympic rower and father to the actress Grace Kelly, later the princess of Monaco. Grace Kelly, along with husband Prince Rainier and 29,000 others, attended the 1956 United Nations won by the season's grass champion Career Boy:

The legendary Round Table won two of his three attempts in the United Nations, in 1957 and 1959, but lost during his 1958 Horse of the Year campaign to Clem. Interestingly, Willie Shoemaker rode Round Table to his two wins and was aboard Clem in his upset over Round Table, giving "The Shoe" a United Nations three-peat: