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METHODS OF STARTING. Speaking of the new walk-up system of starting, an old turfman who goes away back to the days when they started by tap of drum said recently: "The new plan may work all right after awhile when the boys and the horses become accustomed to it. It has some advantages. It is not so great a strain on a horse as a flatfooted start, and it favors sulky horses who are apt to become entirely intractable after remaining at the post for a time. The plan also works to the benefit of apprentices and inexperienced boys. The lads walk to the start with a loose rein and of course when a horse jumps away he gets into his full stride at once. But under the flatfooted system the boys hold a tight rein, the horses go up against the bit, and with an inexperienced kid holding on for dear life, a horse, even if he gets away well, is apt to have all the worst of it. "I do not think that walking to the barrier will have any results in the way of equalizing starts, by which I mean it will not give a poor jockey an equal chance with a good one. On the other hand, first-class riders will have all the best of it, and I believe when it comes to the decision of the big stakes in the east next summer the starter will have his own troubles that is, if the plan is adopted at all the tracks. "Clever boys like Burns or Odom or Fuller, who are under big salaries and who are riding for valuable stakes, will take chances. They will discount a fine or a short suspension by the starter if they can get their mounts away in stride and in front, and it looks to me as though the walk-up system would give them a better opportunity to do this than any other. "As to that, however, no method of sending the horses away has ever yet been devised that will prevent star riders from oc-. casionally beating the starter. Possibly the walk-up plan may be modified as Mr. Fitzgerald is now doing at New Orleans, so that it will work out all right. But I am opposed to radical changes in starting with barriers, for the reason that after you have taught the horses what to do under one system you have to begin all over again when you adopt another." Morning Telegraph.
