Miracle Rises Out of Illinois Ashes : Three Weeks After a Terrible Fire, They’re Ready to Race

The name of Sunday’s Budweiser-Arlington Million race at Arlington Park hasn’t officially been changed, but track officials are calling it the Miracle Million.

None of the 13 competing horses will have to break a world record to make that name stick. The fact that the Million is being run at Arlington at all must rank at least as a minor miracle.

About three weeks ago, a wind-aided early-morning fire, probably caused by an electrical fault, roared and crackled, then smoked and smoldered for three days.

The blaze started in the Post and Paddock Club, a building next to the clubhouse, and wasn’t extinguished until there was total destruction. The track offices, the entire clubhouse and grandstand, a five-story structure that accommodated a record 50,000 fans when Steel Heels upset Equifox in the Stars and Stripes Stakes on the Fourth of July in 1941, were melted into 7,000 tons of twisted steel and 14,000 tons of other ugly debris.

Joe Joyce, president of Arlington Park for eight years through 1981 and part of the four-man group that bought the track from Gulf & Western for $20 million in 1983, gets emotional when discussing the track that was built by John Hertz, Californian Curley Brown and others in 1927.

“She was a dear old lady,” Joyce said. “This was one of the finest race tracks in the world. We put not our money but our hearts and souls in this place, and you kind of hated to see it go down.”

The fire broke out in the middle of the night, and there were no injuries, either to the four people living in the Post and Paddock or the 1,900 horses far away on the backstretch. Within five days, arrangements were completed to finish Arlington’s season at Hawthorne, a track 30 miles southeast of here in suburban Cicero.

But Hawthorne was not suitable to hold the Million, the first $1 million thoroughbred race in the United States, having been hatched by Joyce in 1981.

Hawthorne’s sharp-turned turf course is only six furlongs, a quarter-mile less than Arlington’s, and its plant was not favored by NBC, which was committed to a 90-minute telecast of the Million.

Several tracks called Joyce to ask if he would consider moving the Million, but two days after the fire he met with his partners and they agreed to somehow keep the race at Arlington.

It has been estimated that it would cost $100 million to rebuild Arlington. Because there was extensive insurance coverage, rebuilding probably will happen, but before Joyce considers that, the track is spending at least a couple of million dollars to stage Sunday’s Million.

What has been accomplished is hard to believe. The Cleveland Wrecking Co., which is based in Los Angeles, worked 21 hours a day--stopping only for the horses’ training hours between 6 and 9 a.m.--to remove the 21,000 tons of debris and completed the job four days ahead of schedule.

The rubble has been replaced by 40 large tents, portable bleachers, scaffolds, house trailers, 167 portable toilets and wooden bays for more than 400 parimutuel betting machines. Approximately 271,000 square feet of asphalt has been laid for parking--6 of Joyce’s 13 children have been part of the work force--and 50,000 square feet of AstroTurf has been installed.

There will be seats for more than 15,000, just about the same number that the old track could handle, and the spectators will watch eight races with the help of 125 television sets and three large screens that have been brought here from Philadelphia, Denver and Jacksonville, Fla. A caterer will serve food being prepared in a nearby hotel.

The workers are going down to the wire, charging like John Henry when he won two of the first four Millions. Joyce, touring the site the other day, warned some guests: “Don’t stand still too long; somebody might paint you.”

By Sunday, uninformed passers-by on Euclid Avenue may think there’s a county fair here, rather than a million-dollar horse race. Arlington officials are expecting a crowd of 25,000, which would be 14,000 fewer than last year, but not much below the attendance in the first years of the race.

Earlie Fires doesn’t have a horse in the Million, but the longtime Arlington riding star has mounts in other races, and he’ll be using saddles he was able to remove from the jockeys’ room while the July 31 fire was raging.

Fires and a few other jockeys, including Don Brumfield and Gerland Gallitano, rushed to the scene and tried to save their riding equipment.

“It’s not that those saddles are that valuable,” Fires said. “They probably only cost $200 or $300. But they’re made out of tree wood, and you just can’t get them made anymore. All they make now is plastic.”

None of the riders had permission from police and fire officials to go into the jockeys’ room, which was dark, covered with water on the floor and ready to erupt with pent-up smoke temporarily contained by false ceilings. When the jockeys rushed in, a policeman asked Tommy Trotter, standing outside, if they had permission.

“Sort of,” said Trotter, Arlington’s director of racing. It was Trotter, his wife Sally, their son Dan and a track chauffeur who were sleeping in the Post and Paddock when the fire started. At about 2 a.m., Trotter smelled smoke and called the fire department.

“They were quick,” he said. “They were here in a matter of minutes. For a while, it looked like they were going to be able stop it with only part of the clubhouse gone. But there was fire and smoke in places that nobody knew about, and with the wind it just kept going.”

Trotter, also disobeying fire officials, ran into the racing secretary’s office and saved three filing-cabinet drawers of horses’ foal certificates, official papers that identify horses by physical characteristics and breeding.

“It would have taken at least six months to replace those if they had burned,” Trotter said. “In the meantime, what would the trainers have done who wanted to run those horses?”

Personally, the Trotters weren’t so fortunate. They lost everything, and Tommy was seen walking around in borrowed clothes for several days.

“I went back after the fire was out, a few days later,” Trotter said. “I thought maybe I might find my grandfather’s shotgun. It was a Parker original, a collector’s item that must have been 75 or 100 years old. My grandfather had it, and he gave it to my father and he gave it to me. I used to hunt pheasant and coots with it. But it was no use.”

While clearing the wreckage, workers found a burned safe. Inside was the Haughton Bowl, the silver trophy associated with the Arlington Handicap.

“We think we can restore it,” Joyce said. “It’s priceless--it comes from Europe and must be at least a hundred years old.”

The Million trophy survives because it was on display in a museum in Newmarket, England.

Trotter conducted the Million’s post-position draw Friday at a hotel near the track. The second-to-last horse drawn was the California runner named Both Ends Burning.