view raw text
MORE DISTANCE RACES. It is extremely gratifyingStojfind that the Coney Island Jockey Club, with its usual promptitude and astuteness, has taken up again the, agitation for, more .long distance racing. ThisBpromi-nent clubtHstarted the movement which resulted!? in the institution of the Annual Champion, Century, Advance and Standard Stakes and the Jockey Club and Morris Park weight-for-age races. The failure of big long-distance races to attract first-class fields is mainly because they are too fewin numbers for owners of first-class horses to train for them exclusively. To train for gallops of more than one-mile and a quarter takes speed away from a horse in mile, mile and a furlong and mile and a quarter races. It was suggested last July by Tke Spirit during the Brighton Beach meeting when the Brighton Cup, two miles and a quarter attracted only two starters, that the metropolitan associations might secure bigger and better fields for such races by offering two or three overnight races, worth from ,000 to ,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, and thus keep in condition the horses for the more important long distance races. The officers of the Coney Island Jockey Club are making arrangements to offer at the spring and fall meetings of next year three or four mile and a half and mile and three-quarter overnight events. At least 31,200 will be added in each event, and one or twomayhava a value of ,000. Bealizing that it will be impossible for the Coney Island Club, unaided, to accomplish much, the officers, of the other metropolitan associations will probably be invited to a conference on the matter, and all will probably be arranged satisfactorily. If the plan is carried through, a horse which can cover a distance of ground will in a few years be ranked more valuable than a sprinter and long distance horses will be plentiful as blackberries. The popularity of longdistance racing is attested when the Brighton Cup or the Annnal Champion Race is run from start to finish, amid riotous applause. No races without glamour of tradition such as invests the Brooklyn and Suburban Handicaps and the Futurity draw so well as races like the Brighton Cup, the Century and the Annual Champion. The enterprise of the officers of the Coney Island Jockey Club will, therefore, be followed with keen interest, and every one hopes for the success of the movement. This is practically assured, if only from the standpoint of tho "gate." People will flock to see long distance racing and steeplechasing, and if there is more of it, with good cattle engaged, there is little doubt that the receipts will soon tell the story. Second to this,-sad to Bay in this prosaic age, comes the self evident improvement to the American thoroughbred horse. Instead of only developing sprinters, and trying to do nothing else, we shall have an incentive to develop stamina and distance qualities, and that is what is most wantedSpirit of The Times.
