joemama Wrote:
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> Heard of Kenner when I was down there. Had to be
> before the mid to late 70\'s.
The track was on the shores of Lake Ponchatrain. I absolutely loved that place. In the late 1980s, I had work trips to New Orleans, and they ran night cards out at Jefferson Downs. You could go catch a full card at night after work. A legendary event happened there when one of the Carmouches had the idea of hiding his horse in the fog in a three turn race and skipping a whole lap. He ended up winning by like 20 lengths but got caught because it was so obvious he hadn\'t run the full race.
Also, I used to love tracks with weird chutes or dog legs. Keeneland still has its for 4.5 furlong races as does Santa Anita for the about 6.5 down the hill, but many other tracks had odd chutes. Jefferson Downs had a similar one to keeneland\'s but because the configuration was a bullring, it got a lot more use. Laurel had a legendary 1 mile chute (the Affirmed Alydar Laurel Futurity was on that course, with local fav Star De Naskra getting third if I remember correctly). Pimlico had no chute whatsoever and they timed the races right out of the gate, so first quarter fractions at Pimlico were always slower than everywhere else. Saratoga also used to have a weird dog leg on the clubhouse turn of the dirt course if I remember correctly, I suppose it was to run a 1.5 turn mile, but to be honest, I just can\'t remember what they used the chute for. there were also inner track chutes. Not just the ones you see entering the stretch today, but they had ones entering the backstretch so they could elongate for example a 5 furlong turf race into a 5.5 furlong turf race>
