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GOSSIP OF THE TUKF. The report circulated extensively in the east that Phil J. Dwyer had accepted the presidency lof the Metropolitan Jockey Club, and would manage the meetings at Jamaica next year, is generally doubted and positively denied by one authority. The rumor is grounded on the fact that Mr. Dwyer took the Empire City Club at Yonkers in hand. In that matter, however, he was actuated by an effort to aid the widow of an old-time political friend whose dates already given by The Jockey Club possessed a financial value. William H. Reynolds, who is now president of the new racing organization, says Mr. Dwyer is not even a stockholder in the club, and that nothing had so far been done toward the! appointment of any one to direct the affairs of the club. Mr. Reynolds stated that the management of the Metropolitan Jockey Club would be placed in the hands of men capable of directing its affairs in a satisfactory manner at the proper time. " Tony" Barrett has decided to follow in the foot steps of his brothers Thomas F., sheriff-elect, and John F., who has Barrack and several other horses. "Tony" is now a full-fledged horse owner. After the first race Wednesday at New Orleans he bought Florestan from H. T. Griffin. The price which he paid for the gelding was not made public. Florestan will be handled by ex-jockey Nutt, who is training John Barretts string. "I dont know whether any of the other boys had it in for me or not, but in nearly every race in which I rode I have a bunch handed me at somo stage of it," said jockey Landry recently. "In the handicap Wednesday, jnst after the barrier went up Powell .swung ntonins right acrossm front of Wealth, and I had to snalclTlier up"! olrgb down. She never had a chance after that. It would have taken a Hamburg to win with the deal Mr. Oxnards mare got. I dont believe Powell meant to give me the worst of it, but he did just the same. That interference right at the start cost Wealth the place, I am sure." Eastern parties, the identity of whom Major S. J Carson of Dixiana Farm, Lexington, Ky., refuses to reveal, have secured a thirty-day option on the full sister of Eugenia Burch, the weanling bay filly by Ben Strome The Humber, by Breadknife. For this reason, Carson has been compelled to refuse to name a price for his valuable filly to Foxhall P. Keene, who also is making overtures for her purchase. Charles Thorpe, an American jockey, sometimes called by his youthful rivals "Grandpa" Thorpe, who has ridden in France for the last two seasons with excellent results, was one of the passengers on the Kronprinz Wilhelm, which arrived at New York Wednesday thirty-six hours late. Eddie .Jones, C. Gray and B. Rigby, who also have been riding in France and Hungary, returned on the same vessel. Jones, whose racing career began in California, where he was at one time very popular, will return to Franco next season. Thorpe says he has retired from the saddle, and with his brother will continue to edidt and publish a weekly paper at his home, a small town in Nebraska. Thorpe was fourth on the list of winning jockeys on the French turf this year. He rode eighty winners. Ho could have renewed his contract with the French nobleman who had him under contract this year, bnt he has acquired .a competency, and at middle age thinks he is entitled to a rest. During a whole month in 1902 he rode only two winners. But for this streak of bad luck he would have been very near the top of the heap. Jockeys are well treated in France, Thorpe says. If required to travel from one place to another, even though the journey was .but a few miles, they are paid a day for expenses. Thorpe speaks very highly of the French horses. He eays it is a common practice of turfmen to purchase a two-year-old for 0,000 and train him the following season for jumping races, in one of which the prize is 35,00. Speaking of starting the jockey said that as a rule it was good, but he remembers that on one occasion it was so bad that the excitable Frenchmen wanted to mob the starter. Concerning J. Reiff, Thorpe says that he heard that the youth had not been careful as to the com pany he kept, bnt that his riding was considered above reproach.
