Belmont Park

Belmont Park is a major Thoroughbred horse-racing facility located in Elmont, New York, just outside New York City limits. It first opened on May 4, 1905. It is typically open for racing throughout May and June and into late July, and again from late September through late October.

It is world famous as the home of the Belmont Stakes, known as the "Test of the Champion", the third leg of the Triple Crown.

History of Championship Track

Belmont is known as "The Championship Track" because almost every major champion in racing history since the early 20th century has competed on the racecourse — including each of the 12 Triple Crown winners. Along with Saratoga Race Course, in Upstate New York, Keeneland Race Course, in Lexington, Kentucky, Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky, and Del Mar and Santa Anita racecourses, in Southern California, Belmont is considered one of the elite racetracks in the sport.

Belmont saw its largest crowd in 2004, when 120,139 witnessed the Belmont Stakes as Smarty Jones was seeking the Triple Crown but was upset by Birdstone.

Control freak

In psychology-related slang, control freak is a person who attempts to dictate how everything is done around them. The phrase was first used in the late 1960s — an era when great stress was laid on the principle of 'doing one's own thing' and letting others do the same. In some instances, the term is earnest or self-mocking rather than derogatory, as when a self-styled "take charge" individual willingly proclaims the label.

Vulnerability

Control freaks are often perfectionists defending themselves against their own inner vulnerabilities in the belief that if they are not in total control they risk exposing themselves once more to childhood angst. Such persons manipulate and pressure others to change so as to avoid having to change themselves, and use power over others to escape an inner emptiness. When a control freak's pattern is broken, “the Controller is left with a terrible feeling of powerlessness ... but feeling their pain and fear brings them back to themselves.

Control freaks appear to have some similarities to codependents, in the sense that the latters' fear of abandonment leads to attempts to control those they are dependent on. Recovery for them entails recognising that being a control freak helped paradoxically preserve codependency itself.