Record crowd turns out for Fair Grounds opener

Kermit Ruffins, the legendary New Orleans jazz trumpeter, joined bugler Les Colonello for the call to the post, then threw in a rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In.

ESPN
Fair Grounds: A cause for celebration
By Marcus Hersh
Daily Racing Form

NEW ORLEANS -- Fair Grounds, for those who haven't had the pleasure, is not by any means a large racetrack. It is tucked into a very residential section of New Orleans, stuck between Gentilly Boulevard, an old cemetery, and modest-housed small streets. And Thursday, open for business for the first time in 20 months, the place was absolutely jammed.

Thursday's was not an especially loud or boisterous group - but there were more people here than ever before. The attendance of 8,732 set a record for this building, topping the 8,107 that came out on Thanksgiving Day in 1997, the first meet after the new Fair Grounds grandstand was built following a catastrophic fire.

And the crowd that packed the place on a gorgeous Thanksgiving Day was, well, happy. Concession lines snaked through clubhouse and grandstand open spaces. Fans stacked up four deep to catch a glimpse of horseflesh in the paddock. And every parimutuel teller in the building could expect to look up to a line of 10 or more gamblers from 10 minutes to post onward.

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