Eldora Speedway

racing in 1986 Eldora Speedway New Weston, OH, was built in 1954 by Earl Baltes, a prominent area bandleader with no previous racing experience. Born on April 27, 1921, in nearby Versailles, Ohio, Baltes had stumbled onto a race at New Bremen Speedway and was so impressed by the big, enthusiastic crowd that he decided to build a race track. Baltes had purchased the Eldora Ballroom from "Ma" Shoes two years earlier, offering weekly dances and musical performances. Eventually, Baltes curtailed the musical performances as the track grew more successful. The track was constructed as a quarter-mile as it opened in 1954. Two years later, Baltes expanded the track to a three-eighths-mile, and in 1958 the track was expanded to the present half-mile length. The track hosted the sprint cars of the United States Auto Club for the first time in 1962 and quickly became one of the favorite venues for the series. In August 1965, Orville Yeadon won the first Eldora 500, featuring 33 sprint cars running 500 laps. One year later, Larry Cannon won the Eldora 500, and in 1967 Don Nordhorn won the Eldora 500, the last time the race was contested. Baltes was promoting several other tracks by this time, and the 500-lap race fell by the wayside. In 1971 Baltes shocked the racing fraternity when he held the inaugural World 100, offering an unprecedented purse of $4,000 to the winner. Bruce Gould ultimately won the race. The event is widely considered the birth of the modern "dirt late model" type of racing, which today is one of the most popular forms of racing on America's short tracks. When the World of Outlaws sprint car series was launched in 1978, Baltes recognized the promotional potential of the group and quickly booked several events at Eldora. It was a key partnership for the fledgling series, giving them much-needed credibility and momentum. In October, Eldora hosted the season finale where Steve Kinser captured the inaugural WoO championship and was proclaimed "King of the Outlaws." In the years that have followed, Eldora has remained a mainstay venue on the WoO circuit and annual King's Royal race. While the pit wall bore "Home of the Sprint" for many years, Eldora started as a track for "jalopy" cars, then "new cars/stock cars", which eventually into the modern-day dirt late models. In 1971, Baltes posted a $4,000 winner's purse for the "World 100" which many racers and fans thought was a misprint in the advertising. Promising to raise the winner's share by $1,000 every year, the World 100 annually attracts the largest field of dirt late model racers globally. It is Eldora's largest attended event of the season. The 2017 event paid a record purse of $425,800 and attracted the largest crowd in the history of Eldora Speedway – while Eldora does not typically release attendance figures, the winner's share of the Tony Stewart Foundation 50/50 raffle (often an indication of a short-track's attendance as they are sold by hand for $1 per ticket) on that Saturday night was over $38,000. In the late 1970s, as the crossover between the stars of Indianapolis and USAC dwindled and the era's super-modified cars began to decline, Baltes took notice of a brash Texas promoter named Ted Johnson organizing a "band of outlaw" sprint car drivers racing for larger purses and, in most cases, with aerodynamic wings on their cars. Eldora's high-banks became Ohio and the midwest's home to the World of Outlaws, and, in 1984, Baltes pulled off another one of his firsts when he announced the '$50,000-to-win Kings Royal." In recent years, the event has grown into a three-day extravaganza offering over $385,000 in prize money and awards with regional satellite events in the week leading up to it. Longtime USAC official, car owner, and sponsor, Johnny Vance of Aristocrat Products in Dayton, Ohio, approached Baltes in 1980 about trying an event in 1981 featuring all four of USAC's divisions in one show and called it the "4-Crown Nationals". At the time, USAC sanctioned the champ cars (a/k/a silver crown), national sprint cars, national sprint tour, and a stock car division similar to NASCAR's Grand National Division. The event was a success and celebrated its 37th running in 2018. It has seen several different iterations over the years. It has not run every year, having been wholly rained out/not rescheduled and replaced by the Mopar Million. When USAC dropped its stock car division, they were replaced by dirt late models, and as the World 100 grew, the late models were replaced by the UMP modifieds. As interest in the event waned, the World of Outlaws was added for a Friday show. USAC's remaining three divisions raced solely on Saturday. The event is currently has experienced renewed interest with a weekend full of activity consisting of the World of Outlaws on Friday, USAC's three divisions plus the Tezos All Star Circuit of Champions sprint cars on Saturday, vintage car displays, and three days of racing for 300 USAC .25 midgets competitors and their families at Little Eldora. The 4-Crown Nationals has hosted two of short-track racing's most impressive performances: Jack Hewitt's sweep of the three USAC divisions, and UMP modified feature in one night, and Kyle Larson's sweep of the three USAC divisions (there was not a fourth division that night). In 2001 Baltes held the "Eldora Million", his defining achievement as a race promoter. Offering a $1 million prize to the winner, the race remains by far the richest short-track race in history. Donnie Moran captured the event and the top money, and was christened "the Million Dollar Man." Three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Tony Stewart purchased the speedway in late 2004 from Baltes. Upon his retirement, the state of Ohio honored Baltes by renaming Hwy. 118 "Earl Baltes National Highway" from Ansonia to the south to St. Henry to the north. In 2011, Stewart hired former Charlotte Motor Speedway vice president of events, Roger Slack, a protégé of the legendary promoter Humpy Wheeler, away from World Racing Group where he had served as executive vice president of the new event promotions department since 2009. Slack leads Eldora's day-to-day operations as general manager and speedway promoter. The historic racing oval has continued an aggressive capital improvement program with state-of-the-art luxury suites atop the turn three area. At the same time, fans also enjoy live coverage and replays of the on-track action via the large video board in turn two. Additional catch fencing, attenuators, a widened pit road, a dedicated helipad for Premier Health's CareFlight and Infield Care Center providing on-site facilities for Level 1 Trauma and ER staff are recent additions to benefit both fan and competitors in recent years. ==Kings Royal==