view raw text
RACING DOWN EAST. Of some conditions affecting racing in the east this season the New York Smi of Monday says: "Racing has rarely been presented in a more attractive setting than that at Brighton Beach during the glorious weather that has favored the meeting since its opening:, and the patronage extended has been on a surprisingly liberal scale. There is a limit, however, to the equanimity of race-gcers, and it is to be hoped that there will be no repetition of the skeleton card presented last Saturday. No one doubts the desire of the management to furnish- genuine attractions, but two and three horse events where the result is a foregone conclusion do not fill the bill. The blame is generally attributed to the horsemen, who think more of their own interests than of the welfare of the sport. "On Saturday, for instance, there wore thirty four nominations for the Nautilus Stakes and only two had been declared, but when it came to post time the race dwindled down to a match between Martimas and Little Saint, while all the others were presumably eating their heads off in the stable. The decimation of what ; promised to bs an interesting stake may have i been justifiable from a trainers standpoint, but the majority who support the game are not : likely to look at such matters in the same light, and they are certainly entitled to some more consideration from the minority who live by it. , The same policy played skittles with the sport ; at Saratoga in past seasons until it became an t open question whether The Village represented an equine charity hospital or a standard I racing center. There is room for reform in this i direction, and should the racing associations that control the stable-letting choose to take heroic measures, they seem to have a remedy at hand. Too much latitude has so far been allowed to equine dead heads. "While there have been several incidents in racing this season that aroused public and official displeasure, there is a marked improvement in one direction. Selling races are no longer nsad wholesalers handy and profitable mediums of placing stake horses. Iustances in which horses are entered for a fraction of their value are now the exceptions, and when thoy crop up there is generally a bidder handy to raise the ants. The result is not only beneficial to owners of moderate animals, bat to the morale of the sport generally, because of the growing balief that rules bearing on this and other points in the management of racing are being: enforced impartially and intelligently."
