Crítica
- A Day of Celebration
- The Racecourse
- The Crowd
Crítica gave its front page of 17 October 1926 to the Gran Premio Nacional at Palermo. A lyrical opening sketch described the gusty wind, the indigo sky and the held breath of the crowd before the starting tape broke. A second report compared the packed grandstands to Epsom on Derby day, noted the last fur coats beside early spring dresses and the first straw hats, and recorded the surprise surrounding the Remanso colt from the Stud Saavedra, who had become the Palermo public's new idol. A third piece portrayed Buenos Aires society in its finery and the roar and a hundred thousand waving hands as the winner, Quemao, went by.
This edition translates three passages from the front page: the opening sketch, the racecourse report and the crowd report. The second and third passages begin mid-sentence where the selection cuts into the preceding text, and the opening fragment of the third breaks off at a 'continued on the next page' notice; that continuation and the rest of the page, including 'EL COMENTARIO', are not translated. A Biblioteca Nacional library slip covers part of the masthead notice and the first letters of the main headline, the motto lines under the masthead are mostly too faint to read, and the badly garbled OCR was not relied on where it conflicts with the image. Words cut off at column edges and smudged words were left out rather than guessed. The photographs carry only short name labels.
Translation
A Day of Celebration
A wind, at times unpleasant, seems bent on sweeping the clouds from the heavens, which at this hour show a diaphanous indigo. The burnished sun rises on tiptoe to see this other star, around which thousands upon thousands of eyes revolve, attentive to its slightest movements. It is the culminating minute that precedes the start; even nature seems suspended with emotion. The wind that combs the trees, the grass and the flowers dies down... In every chest, too, the breath is held, and it bursts into murmurs when the tape breaks. A day of celebration! Luminous and splendid, worthy of such a feat!
The Racecourse
…the consequent surprise, for the son of Remanso of the Stud Saavedra had already made his way into the hearts of racing enthusiasts and was already shaping up as the new idol of the Palermo public.
The racecourse
The mere mention of the Gran Premio Nacional gives an idea of how the racecourse looked this afternoon. Anyone who has ever witnessed the running of the legendary English Derby will surely have relived some of the emotions of the afternoon at Epsom today, before the vast stands of Palermo, filled with spectators beyond anything ever heard of, and before the tight crush of the crowd in every space the racecourse offers the public. The temperature could not have been more cordial: a beautiful sun flooded everything with lively, vibrant light. As in other years, there was the contrast between the last fur coats and the premature light, many-coloured "toilettes" of the spring season. As in other years, the cheerful, optimistic note of the first "canotiers" was at moments jarring against the last, persistent overcoats. As always at events like today's, the public showed itself indifferent and disdainful toward the first races,
The Crowd
…to transcribe all the interesting things we managed to hear as we made our way with difficulty through the throng. The circumstance that, because of the (continued on the next page.)
The crowd
Buenos Aires is celebrating. The Hipódromo Argentino, like an enormous salon, shelters the most elegant, the most enthusiastic and the most beautiful that the city has. The women, in their charming eagerness to please and to shine, have dressed in their finest. The men, in the enormous gathering, strike a severe dark note barely sprinkled with white by the premature straw hats. The enormous human mass crowds together, swirls, and at times opens up like a buzzing swarm. Suddenly a single cry rises from every chest and a hundred thousand hands wave in the air. It is the winner of the Gran Premio Nacional going by. It is Quemao who has gone by.
Context
The Gran Premio Nacional, today called the Argentine Derby, and Quemao's 1926 win
Crítica's reporter reaches for Epsom because the Gran Premio Nacional is the race known today as the Argentine Derby: now a contest for three-year-olds over 2,500 metres, run at Palermo. The standard winners' list confirms the page's central fact, recording Quemao as the 1926 winner, after Macón in 1925 and before Bermejo in 1927. Reference works agree that the race has been run at Palermo since the 1880s but differ on the first edition: the race's own record gives annual running since 1884, while the racecourse history says it was first run in 1885 and won by Souvenir. The page treats the race as the great event of the year, so prominent that 'the mere mention' of its name is enough to call up the scene at the track.
Rubens, the Remanso colt hailed as Palermo's new idol
The fragment that precedes 'El hipódromo' speaks of a 'consequent surprise' because the son of Remanso, of the Stud Saavedra, had become the new idol of the Palermo public. The excerpt does not name the horse, but the Thoroughbred Heritage register of the Gran Premio Jockey Club, today a 2,000-metre turf race for three-year-olds at San Isidro, lists the 1926 winner as Rubens, a bay colt foaled in 1923 by Remanso out of Mamita II. That record makes Rubens the most likely subject of the passage: a Remanso colt who won the Jockey Club that year and whose result in the Nacional, to judge from the paper's wording, did not match the public's hopes. The same register shows his younger full brother Bermejo winning the Jockey Club in 1927, and the Nacional list gives Bermejo as that year's winner, so the Remanso–Mamita II mating did produce a Nacional winner one year later. The Stud Saavedra ownership rests on the paper alone, and neither the excerpt nor the sources consulted here record the betting on the race.
Palermo's racecourse and its 1908 grandstand
The vast Palermo stands that the reporter saw packed 'beyond anything ever heard of' were less than twenty years old in 1926. The racecourse had opened on 7 May 1876 as one of the first in Buenos Aires; the Argentine Jockey Club, formed in 1881, took over its administration in 1884; and in 1908 the original buildings and grandstands were replaced by a Beaux Arts grandstand designed by Louis Faure-Dujarric. When the crowd report likens the Hipódromo to 'an enormous salon' sheltering the city's most elegant people, it is describing this relatively new setting. The 'hundred thousand hands' waving at Quemao belong to the paper's rhetoric rather than to any attendance count.
Horse racing as Argentina's great mass spectacle
The lavish treatment of a single race reflects the place of the turf in Argentine life at the time. Roy Hora's history of Argentine racing, as presented by El Historiador, holds that until the 1950s horse racing was the country's largest sporting spectacle, and that, unlike in other places, it drew the interest of the popular classes. The book traces the sport's boom after the founding of the Jockey Club and the racecourse, and its decline with the rise of sports such as boxing and football. Crítica's page of 1926 falls in the middle of that boom, which helps explain why the reporters wrote not only about the winner but about fur coats against spring dresses, premature straw hats and the roar of a vast crowd: the Nacional was both a society occasion and a mass event.
Natalio Botana's Crítica
The paper that printed this page was the Crítica founded by Natalio Botana, published from 1913 to 1962, and in the 1920s it was the most widely circulated newspaper in Latin America. Its coverage of the Nacional shows the style that suited such a readership: three separate pieces on one front page, written as impressions of sky, wind, clothing and crowd rather than as a dry results report, with the winner's name held back until the final line of 'La concurrencia'.
Original
Día de fiesta
Día de fiesta Un viento, a ratos desapacible parece empeñado en barrer de nubes el ámbito celeste, que a esta hora se presenta de un añil diáfano. El bruñido sol se empina para ver a este otro astro, en derredor del cual giran millares y millares de ojos atentos a sus menores movimientos. Es el minuto culminante que precede a la largada hasta la naturaleza parece suspensa de emoción. Amaina el viento que peina los árboles, la gramilla y las flores... También en los pechos se detiene el aliento que estalla en rumores al romperse la cinta. ¡ Día de fiesta! ¡ Luminoso y espléndido, digno de tal hazaña!
El hipódromo
la consiguiente sorpresa, pues el hijo de Remanso del Stud Saavedra habíase ya adentrado en el corazón de los aficionados al deporte hípico y se perfilaba ya el nuevo ídolo del público de Palermo. El hipódromoLa sola enunciación del Gran Premio Nacional, da idea del aspecto que presentaba el hipódromo en la tarde de hoy. Quien haya presenciado alguna vez la disputa del legendario Derby inglés, hoy, ante las amplias tribunas de Palermo, colmadas hasta lo inaudito de espectadores; ante el apretado apeñuscamiento del gentío en cuanto espacio ofrece el hipódromo al público, habrán seguramente revivido algunas emociones de la tarde de Epsom. La temperatura no pudo ser más cordial: un sol hermoso inundaba todo de luz viva y vibrante. Lo mismo que otros años, se noto el contraste de los últimos abrigos de pieles frente a las prematuras " toilettes " claras y policromas de la estación primaveral. Lo mismo que otros años, la nota alegre y optimista de los primeros " canotiers " resultó por momentos chocante frente a los últimos y persistentes sobretodos. Lo mismo que siempre en acontecimientos como el de hoy, el público se mostró indiferente y desdeñoso por las primeras pruebas,
La concurrencia
ra transcribir todas las cosas interesantes que nos fué dado escuchar, mientras dificultosamente nos abríamos camino entre el gentío. La circunstancia de que, por las (continúa en la pág. siguiente.) La concurrencia Buenos Aires está de fiesta. El hipódromo Argentino, como un enorme salón, cobija lo más elegante, lo más entusiasta y lo más bello que tiene la ciudad. Las mujeres, en el afán encantador de agradar y lucirse, se han vestido de gala. Los hombres, en el conjunto enorme, ponen una severa nota obscura apenas salpicada de blanco por los prematuros sombreros de paja. La enorme masa humana se apiña, se arremolina, se abre a ratos como un zumbador enjambre. De pronto, un solo grito sale de todos los pechos y cien mil manos se agitan por los aires. Es que pasa el triunfador del Gran Premio Nacional. Es que pasó Quemao.
Source: Source: Internet Archive / Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina