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GOSSIP OF THE TUBF. The contract for building the grandstand at the New Kansas City race track has been let. The bid of David H. Barnes of Chicago, has been approved by C. C. Christie, president, and Edward Corrigan, one of the prime movers in the newly organized Kansas City Racing Association. Mr. Barnes will use as a pattern the new stand at Hawthorne, which supplanted the old double-decker structure that was destroyed by fire just after the .races on Decoration Day last year. The Kansas City stand will be a steel structure 362 feet long and 92 feet deep, and is expected to be one of the most satisfactory structures of its kind in the country. In fact, the Kansas City plant in all its appointments is to be as nearly as possible a reproduction of Hawthorne. Its stand will have a material advantage over any other in the west from the fact that the land on which it will be built is sloping, and will have a considerable elevation about the track. Mr. Christie says it will be possible for as many as 10,000 people to see every part of a race from the grandstand, clubhouse and terrace. The grandstand is to be completed by July 1. The grading of the track is now in progress, and it is to be finished by the middle of May. The racing stable of the Cincinnati turfman, Clem Hellebush, Jr., including Autumn Leaves and the smart three-year-old filly, Lady Matchless, which has been wintering at the Melbourne Stud, was shipped to Memphis last Friday, where they will be trained for the coming campaign. Autumn Leaves has improved wonderfully by her long rest, and both she and Lady Matchless promise to be good winners this season. There is an unusually big demand for stable room at all of the Long Island tracks. Stables have been requested for more than 2,000 horses and there are not that number available. Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach will be overtaxed. The wealthy owners all have stables of their own, but the poor turfmen complain of the lack of accommodations. They say that while the racing associations have displayed marked liberality in the hanging up of rich stakes and purses they have forgotten all about increased stable accommodations, which are greatly needed. The poorer class of horsemen want to race at eastern tracks, because the purses and stakes are more attractive than elsewhere, but most of them are financially unable to pay for private stable room far removed from the tracks. J. E. Madden will take a big string of two-year-olds east this year, according to his annual custom. Ha has sovonty-oight youngsters, the get of Mirthful, Plaudit, Sandrlngham and Ogden, and forty of tbem are already in training at Churchill Downs. Among them is a full sister to Acofull, but nobody but Madden has a line on the fillys quality. A recent visitor to Hamburg Place says that the Madden breeding establishment is complete in all its appointments. It contains 1,9C0 acres of valuable land and there are 315 horses in the barns, including forty-five yearlings, choicely bred. Several . colts sired by Plaudit are said to be the most promising in the Madden string, T, Hitchcock, Jr., who has been visiting Hamburg Place, has gone to Aiken, S. C, where his horses are quartered for the winter. A stake race of four miles willbs run "by- ft! -Louisiana Jockey Club, which annually holds a six i days meeting at New Orleans next month. The race has been named after the club, which will add 52,000 to a sweepstake of 0 each, with 3 additional to start. A race at this distance has not been run at the Crescent City in twenty years until last year and the revival is intended to recall memories of the four mile heats which were at one time all the rage in the south. If the new race proves successful, its value will be increased with the idea of attracting a better class of horses next year. The only other four mile race on the American racing calendar is the Thornton Stakes, run at California. Ie establishing the race, the Louisiana Jockey Clafc will give a boom to long distance racing which ia rapidly growing in popularity in the east, so mack so that each racing association there has mods arrangements to include several affairs of this kin in their programs for 1903. The public has on more than one occasion manifested dissatisfaction with the overbnndan ce of sprint races and has alwayB waxed enthusiastic over the contests over a distance of ground. In due time it is believed that the east will eee all the best horses of the older division measuring strides in such events as the Brighton Cup, the Annual Champion and the Woodlawn Vase, races which have been little more than fizzles on many past.occasions, because of the lightness of the fields. Col. W. S. Barnes has leased of Earl Sellers, for five years, the latters stock farm, known as Konil-worth, on the Georgetown Pike, containing 250 acres, and will run it as an addition to his famous Melbourne Stud. The place is directly opposite to the home of Handspring, Rainbow and Prince of Monaco, and is one of the most highly improved farms in Kentucky, all the buildings and fencing on the place having been newly erected last year. This will give the Melbourne Stud the greatest acreage of any breeding farm located so near Lexington. "Tod" Sloan may ride for Mrs. Langtry in this country this year, if he succeeds in his effort to secure a pardon from the English Jockey Clab. It is reported that jnst before she left for America, Mrs. Langtry made him a handsome offer to ride for her in America, and this has encouraged him to urge his appeal to the Jockey Club with additional energy. Mrs. Langtry was the first patron of racing to predict a succsssf ul career in England for Sloan, and she has always felt that ho had been harshly treated by the Jockey Club authorities. If 81oans license is refused he says he will turn his back on the JSnglish racecourse forever.
