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GOSSIP OF THE TURF August Belmont who is responsible for the exist ¬ ence of the Bonnings raco track paid a visit to Washington last Thursday and so satisfiedrwas he with the outlook that he immediately began mak ¬ ing liberal changes His first move was to have posted a notice that on and after March 29 all purses of 300 would be increased to 400 After looking around the paddock and clubhouse in ¬ specting things Mr Belmont paid a visit to the cheap field He saw possibly a dozen occupants in the stand Seymour Butler was with him and they spoke of the present poor outlook of the field stand paying the expenses of the gatekeepers Their con ¬ versation was overheard and Mr Belmont inti ¬ mated that he saw no prospect of the field paying unless there were one or two bookmakers to attract attention As matters now stand it is surely a drug on the market and it may be predicted that in the near future there will be more to interest the patrons than the dry occupation of watching the The San Francisco Examiner of March 25 has this to say of Jockey Willie Knapp about one of his re ¬ cent victories on Frangible Little Knapp for so small a boy put up a mar ¬ velous ride in a mile and a sixteenth handicap yes ¬ terday He went away from the post whipping and kept at his horse nearly all the way around finally winning in a drive from Janice the 1 to 2 favorite Frangible was at 25 to 1 in the betting Knapp evi ¬ dently had very clear instructions as to how to ride the race and he followed them He outran the field to the first turn so as to get the rail position and then hugged the insido of the track No one could have ridden the horse better At the head of the stretch he looked beaten but Knapps whip kept him at his work and in the final drive his advan ¬ tage in weight helped him Janice might have beaten him at that if Position had not crowded her all during the run through the stretch She man ¬ aged to beat Position by a very narrow margin for second place Saratogas full list of stake entries for 1902 in ¬ cludes the following prominent western nomina ¬ tors Burns Waterhouse E J Baldwin G C Bennett Co Burlingame Stock Farm Prince Poniatowski J P Chinn Fred Cook John A Drake H B Durham C R Ellison E S Gardner George Hondrie W B Jennings Co W H Laudeman J B Lewman Liger Brown W H McCorkle W OB Macdonough Middleton Jung bluth W J Price P Ryan J W Schorr W Sho walter W Williams Henry M Zicgler It is many years since there have been so many western stables and of such high class besides engaged at Sara ¬ toga W C Whitney was quoted as saying several days days ago that in his estimation Nasturtium stands one chance in a thousand of winning the Epsom Derby that tho colt had not been withdrawn but that the matter rested entirely with trainer Hug gins Mr Whitney was also quoted to the effect that ho had learned that Nasturtium had improved in health but was so far gone that it would take a couple of months before he could begin hard train
