It started like any other Monday at Long Island’s Belmont Park outside New York City. The weather was warming up as the annual spring horse racing season was winding down, tempting many workers to sneak out of their sweltering Manhattan offices for an afternoon watching the ponies.

With temperatures already in the upper 80s and air conditioning still decades away, it didn’t take much temptation.

Horse racing was big in those days, right up there with baseball and boxing. But the thousands of fans who filled Belmont’s massive grandstand on June 4, 1923, saw much more than the usual round of races.

They witnessed something that had never happened before, and hasn’t happened since.

It was a ho-hum race card with largely lackluster entrants that day. Owners entered their best horses in mar

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