view raw text
MB. WHITNEYS HORSES. "Mr. Whitney paid 0,000 for Nasturtium to the former bootblack, A. L. Asto. Nasturtium wintered at Westbury and all the turf world knows that the son of Watercress is now a roarer and will never race again. He paid 0,000 for Endurance by Right, the greatest filly since Miss Woodford, and the sea fogs got into her throat and made a roarer of her. Blue Girl had the Westbury influenza and narrowly escaped the fate of Nasturtium and Endurance by Right. The best yearlings that Mr. Whitney owned last year, horses with which he hoped to win many of the rich two-year-old stakes this year, fell sick and died at Westbury, so that any hope he may have had of winning the English Derby with Nasturtium or of sweeping the boards in this country, were blasted before the racing season began on either side of the Atlantic," says a Saratoga letter to the Sun of Friday. "This winter the Whitney horses will have winter quarters at Aiken, S. C, where Mr. Whitney has a winter place. He has a number of box stalls there, and many more will be built before it is time to send the horses to the stable for the winter. Aiken I is on high ground ; it is a place where people go in search of health, and Mr. Whitney sees no reason why it should not be a great place for horses. At any rate, it is bound to be better than Westbury. "Two of the famous wrecks of Westbury Nasturtium and Endurance by Right are now here. Nasturtium arrived from the Wheatley Hills yesterday and Endurance by Right, now a splendid three-year-old filly, an far as looks go, will leave here tomorrow for La Belle Farm, Mr. Whitneys Kentucky breeding establishment, where she will be installed as one of the matrons. This will be news to most turfmen, as it has been thought that the splendid daughter of Inspector B. might again carry the colors of her owner to victory. But after waiting patiently for several months, Mr. Whitney has become convinced that tke filly will never again have good wind, and so she is sleeping tonight for the last time on a racetrack. She will be shipped tomorrow morning by fast express to Lexington. It has not yet been decided with what sire she will be mated. " To Nasturtium Saratoga i serving as a health resort. He was Drought here to recuperate .after his severe illness of the past few months. When it was found, after he began training in England for the Derby, that bis -wind was seriously affected, Mr. Whitney ordered that he be sent back to this country and he arrived here in May. He was sent to Westbury and-shortly afterward he was taken with inflammation of the bowels., The pain he suffered was so intense that he became insane for a while, and in his delirium knocked himself about in the stall until he was bruised from head to tail. He is quite over his illness, but the marks of the self-pounding are still in evidence, and he looks little like the Nasturtium which won the Flatbush Stakes for two-year-olds at Sheepshead Bay last year. It was said at the stable this afternoon that if the colt is worked only at a trot his heavy breathing can be heard half way across the track. When he has fully regained his strength he will follow Endurance by Right to La Belle. "A number of yearlings bred by Mr. Whitney arrived here this week. Among the lot is a black filly by Hamburg which is regarded by those critics who have seen her as one of the finest yearlings ever seen in the north. She is almost the exact counterpart of her great sire. She has the short back, the well-rounded quarters and the great depth of shoulders and chest of Hamburg, and has even the forelegs that one who ever saw Hanovers greatest son can never forget. There is also among the yearlings a son of Meddler, bigger and stronger than the usual run of Meddler colts from which great things are expected. "Mr. Whitney beHeves that the trouble at Westbury has been. due, not to the Long Island climate, but to defective construction in his stable. It is too fine for thoroughbreds. The floors of the stalls are of brick. Brick holds dampness. In wet and foggy weather straw that had been put into the stalls bone dry at night would be found to be water-soaked in the morning. That meant, of course, that the horses had lain on wet straw for most of the night. The effect of wet weather on soldiers in camp is well known. Those who should know say that the effect is a hundred fold worse on racehorses. Mr. Whitney is to have the stable altered and he hopes that the existing .defects may be remedied. There , are Jhose, however, who say that the Wheatley Hills section ,pf Long Island is no place in which to winter thoroughbreds, no matter what sort of a stable they havp."
