Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
with “everyman’s grandstand” rising above them; called “the plató”, the uppermost storey affords the best view of the track. On the second storey of the grandstand beneath the flights of stairs was the “hallway of sighs” along which bettors would hurry with their snips to the totalisator’s agency. Three turf courses, each 50-metre broad, stretch before the terraces: nearest the grandstand is a 1,300-metre stretch, in the middle runs the medium-distance track with a mild curve called the elbow-course, while the innermost, elliptical, track is used for long-distance races. During the first days of 1945, the siege of Budapest ravaged the gallop course, too. Races could only be restarted in a year’s time. Some of the buildings had to be rebuilt from the concrete foundations up, while the shell holes pockmarking the course were being filled with rubble, soil and horse carcasses. Suitable race horses were also hard to come by, but capable thoroughbreds and half-breeds were truly the rarest of rare commodities in a war-devastated country. The apocalyptic picture soon changed, however. The course was restored, if not to its original splendour but to a fairly decent condition. Near the paddock is an ornamental well brought over from the racing course in the City Park, and two statues stand before the first-class grandstand perpetuating the memory of Kincsem and Imperiál, those exceptionally talented horses of the past. Peculiar to the racing course nicknamed “Lovi” are the two micro-communities inhabiting its premises. One of these is the exclusive society of the facility’s employees who occupy the single-storey red-brick buildings of the “housing estate” at the western end of the course. The other is made up of the regular patrons themselves turning out from spring to autumn creating and preserving a unique subculture among the walls of the buildings that, having deserved the status of protected monuments, should urgently be renovated. The fringe boulevard of Pest We take our next walk in the area between the People’s Park and the quarter called Angyalföld to call on stadia and fields belonging to the larger sports clubs of 33
