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WILE. FOSTER LONG RACES. The Coney Island Jockey Club, the initiator of the movement which has resulted in the institution of the Annual Champion, Century, Advance and Standard Stakes and the Jockey Club and Morris Park weight-for-age races, has under consideration a scheme to annually secure first-class fields for these events. The failure of big long-distance races to attract first-class fields has been ascribed to the fact that thoy are too few in number for owners of first-class horses to train for them exclusively. Owners contend that training for gallops of more than a mile and a quarter takes so mucn speed away from a horse that he cannot compete with fair prospect of success in mile, mile and a furlong and mile and a quarter races. It was suggested last July at Brighton Beach, when the Brighton Cup, two miles and a quarter, attracted only two starters, that the metropolitan associations might secure bigger and better fiolds for such events by offering two or three overnight purses, worth from ,000 to 1,500 in added money, at distances ranging from one mile and a half to two miles and a quarter, and making it worth while for owners to run in them exclusively. The officers of the Coney Island Jockey Club have taken up that suggestion and are making arrangements to offer at the spring and fall meetings of next year throe or four mile and a half and mile aTid three-quarters overnight events. At least ,-200 will bo added in each event; it is said by a person whose authority cannot be questioned, that one or two may have a value of ,000. Eealizing that it will be impossible for tho Coney Island club, unaided, to accomplish tho task of filling the big long-distance Special, its officers will invito the officers of tho other metropolitan associations to a conference, with a view to arranging a goaoral scheme, on the linos indicated, to effect that end. There is not the least doubt but that the Coney Island folk will be ablo to interest their brother managers, and the outlook for long distance racing is therefore bright. If their plan goes through without a hitch a horse with a liking for a distance of ground will become in a few years more valuable than a sprinter. Moreover, the tribe of stayers will increase, because the enpidity of owners will be aroused and they will make stayers of the kind of horses they say now cannct be trained to go a route. The popularity of long distance racing is attested every timo such a special as the Brighton Cnp or the Annual Champion race is run by an uproar among the spectators from start to finish, and by the riotous applause with which the fields aro groeted every time they pass the grandstand. No races without glamour of tradition such as invests tho Brooklyn and Suburban Handicaps and tho Futurity draw so well as races like the Brighton Cup, the Century and the Annual Champion. It is keenly disappointing to the men and women who support the game with gate money to see only two or three horses compete for them. Tho enterprise of the officers of the Coney Island Jockey Club will therefore be followed with keen interest, and the metropolitan turf patrons will work for its success. Daily America.
