BEIRUT: When 21 horses kept at Beirut’s Hippodrome were put down recently after an outbreak of Glanders disease was discovered in two, it was to little media attention and somewhat more vocal local opposition.

Last week a neighborhood association released a statement demanding that authorities take steps to tackle the disease, though the body that runs the track insists most of the horses killed were never affected and the problem was solved by the cull.

The reaction revealed the position Beirut’s race track is in; overlooked by most people in the city, but the focus of critics who would like to see the site replaced, either because of an opposition to gambling or to use the land for future development.

The Hippodrome is a piece of Beirut’s history. Its current home is the site it has occupied since 1918, before which it was in the suburb of Bir Hassan. Given its cultural significance, and the fact Lebanon is one of the rare places in the Middle East where betting on horses is legal, the track has fallen into a perhaps surprising degree of disrepair and under-use.

Combined, the track and its neighbor, Horsh Beirut, are the two biggest open, green spaces in the city, yet both are kept almost hidden from view, the park being largely closed to public use and the Hippodrome open only twice a week.

For a certain group of people though the Hippodrome is a welcome escape from the city, a rare place where cross sections of society can gather for a shared passion.

Nabil Nasrallah, the director of the Society for the Protection and Improvement of the Arabian Horse in Lebanon, which runs the track, sees some vindictiveness in the recent response to the horse cull.

“All that the people are saying about it,” he says, “it has a certain aim, a certain object. They want to close the race track, they want to take over the area, they want to rebuild the area, to take advantage of it.”

The Hippodrome is clearly close to Nasrallah’s heart, something of a labor of love. Sitting at his desk with an enormous print of one of famous French photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand’s stable scenes hanging behind him, he tells of how he has worked here for 40 years, from the end of its glory days in the 1970s, through the war when it opened intermittently until it was bombed by Israel in 1982 and forced to close, and during its minimal reconstruction with just $2 million of investment. In contrast, Casino du Liban, which was not bombed, invested $50 million in renovations and developments after the war.

The track has now reached what Nasrallah terms a “stagnation period” and when asked what can be done to improve its fortunes, he appears to take the question as personal criticism.

“I … I have to,” he says, drawing a heavy sigh and taking a long pause, before launching into an explanation of the difficulties of making changes in a climate of insecurity.

“[After we were bombed], we didn’t really have the chance of rebuilding as we wished to do. We are still waiting for better days.”

The track is open for races one day a week (Saturday during the summer, Sunday the rest of the time), down from two before the war, and also Wednesdays when visitors can use the cafe while betting on races in France and Britain, broadcast to the track via a deal called simulcasting. Around 500 visitors come every week. The number that has remained fairly steady throughout the years and, looking around, you can imagine that the clientele hasn’t changed much either.

For 364 days a year there are no hints of the hippodrome’s glamour years, when a trip to the races was a standard part of any dignitary’s visit to Lebanon. Instead of men in suits and women in fashionable footwear, today the races are a much more democratic, dress-down affair, with short-sleeved shirts the uniform of the almost overwhelmingly older male crowd sitting on white plastic chairs spread across the stands.

Beirut’s glitterati do gather for a day at the races, hats and all, once a year, when the Beirut Race Cup takes place every autumn, but Nasrallah isn’t focused on trying to bring that crowd back to the track.

“The time where people are coming for glamour like they do for Ascot in Britain, it’s the past.”

The hippodrome still has its VIP lounges; sparse rooms without much in the way of luxury, although they do have the privilege of air conditioning. Here horse owners and friends of the race track association mill around, greeting old faces and cheering their favorite horses.

“My father owned a horse before me. We’ve been at the track for 50 years,” says Maroun Chamoun, a 57-year-old banker who owns two horses kept at the Hippodrome, Chahd al-Assal (“pure honey”) and Abol Hol (“thanks”).

“I was 3 when I first came here,” he says, seated at a balcony overlooking the track’s paddock. “I remember everything from those visits: the people, the jockeys. It was very glamorous.”

Chamoun was 18 years old when he got his first horse and says he hopes his own daughter will continue the family tradition, although he recognizes that the sport has fallen out of favor with younger people.

Nonetheless, he says, “the race horses still hold a cache.”

“We can make a lot of changes, but the race horse must stay in Beirut.”

“We want really to improve the love of the horse,” says Nasrallah. “People do come back to this attachment. To this tradition, to the horse.”

He admits that the Hippodrome’s image might be off-putting for some of Beirut’s younger crowds. “The very rich ones, they expect something like Dubai, with a lot of Lexuses and so on, and we cannot offer them this.”

It’s clear that loyalty to the sport is what draws many of the people here on a blazing Saturday afternoon. “I have been coming here since I was 15 years old, around 40 years ago. I’m here every week,” says George Feghali, who has today brought his daughter and grandson. “I come here because I love the horses. It hasn’t changed.”

Though it is mostly older men there are also a few families here, and the race track retains a cross-class appeal, although some say there is an unspoken stratification in the seating.

SPARCA have long hoped to see the site be opened up for public use, but so far the gates of the Hippodrome have remained closed for most of the time.

“We have always been thinking that a part of it has to be a garden,” he says. “The race track should be open every day … the point is that the public area will cost money, and this is the most important thing to consider.”

Despite the opposition it faces, Nasrallah is confident that this Beirut institution is not going to become a relic of old Beirut.

“If they closed it, the whole country would be affected,” he says. “[It has been here for 100 years], and if you allow me to live 100 more years, I’m sure I would see it stay here.”