ATHLETICS

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 671, 15 January 1903, Page 8

ATHLETICS

This is an age of trusts (writes the American correspondent of the “ Referee and a Gotham newspaper is the first to proclaim the shadowing out of what it terms “ a sporting trust.” It says that Hempstead Plains, Long Island, is to be the scene of operations, and that permanent grounds are to be laid out looking to the promotion of horseracing, autoinobiling, cycling, baseball, and football,, to say nothing of minor sports. Some railway people are interested in the scheme, and the names ot one or two of

New York’s millionaires are mentioned in I;he connection, i H.. B. » Fullerton, passenger agent of the Long Island railroad, was interviewed on the matter. This is what he said : ” It’s coming. We will have the greatest coliseum, Olympian field and racing amphitheatre the world has ever’ dreamed about, and , right out on the Hempstead Plains. A ten-miles track for automobiles, a running track for horses, with one mile straight away on each side,, a bicycle track, a cinder path, football and baseball grounds, golf links, and all the rest of it. It’s bound to come, and the money is ready to do it all. It is a question of only a few years when all the race tracks in New York will have to go— Gravesend, Brighton, Sheepshead, Morris Park, Aqueduct—every one of them. Out on the grounds I have mentioned there is room for them all. All the trotting tracks and other things could be absorbed in one big corporation. Trusts are the Order of the day, and why hot a sporting and athletic trust* ? Some may think the scheme too vast, but it is a petty thing for New York. Why, Rome never was in it with New York. It did not compare in point of wealth or opportunity, and we can do things here that will make the whole world blink its eyes. We will do it. We have got the capital, the brains, and the enterprise.” : v