A long shot

0nly on Sunday mornings can the thunder of horse hooves and the cheers and moans of men be heard rising up from the 84-year-old Beirut Hippodrome. In stark contrast to the glamorous Mediterranean racetrack it was before the war, the facility today is in a sorry state. Its concrete bleachers look like the seating one would find in a third-rate football stadium. The lighting for the track was blown out during the war and never repaired. Consequently, potentially lucrative night races cannot be held. There are only 10% of the number of stables today than there were during the early 1970s. And the Hippodrome has become a big money loser. Between 1995 and 1997, the Association for the Protection and Improvement of Arabian horses (SPARCA), a non-profit organization that has been managing the track since the late I 960s, reported a loss of about $700,000 from the facility, which has