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i J | : • DEFENDS NEW SELLING RACE RULES. Baltimore. .Md.. April 11. Under a New York date line, in the issue of Daily Hacing Form of ! April S. one of the officials at Bowie is quoted as saying that "The Jockey Clubs new selling race rule is not bringing about the desired object." As a elos? observer of the working of the new rule at Bowie, the writer is not inclined to accept this version of it. Assuming that it was not the intent of the stewards wiio passed the rule, to stop the bidding on selling-race winners, but to try and correct the evils which have attended these operations in the past. I see nothing so far in working out of the new rule to indicate it is a bad one. The evils of the old rule were a desire on the part of some owners of second horses, to take the purse or more away from the owner of the winner, thereby increasing his own cerdit with the association to one-half of the runup: intimidation, or threats of intimidation for the owner of the second horse, who refused to give back the runup money when the bidding was not done by him and. the fact that the association was enriched by oile-half of the runup money. That, the new rule has not stopped bidding on selling-race winners, nor so far even curtailed it. has been sufficiently demonstrated at Bowie where six winners were bid up in one day. But that the three greatest evils of the old rule have been largely done away with, no one can gainsay. In few of the numerous runups at Bowie has the bidding been done by one having a horse in the race and. in these few cases, the desire to participate in the division of the surplus could not have been the reason. In some cases the bidding has l«een done by horsemen trying to get together a stable for summer racing at the smaller tracks. But in most instances, the awakening of old antagonisms, dormant since racing closed hereabouts last year, has tn-en the reason for the bidding. Horsemen were not content to commence the new season with old seores wiped out. but had to take up the old selling-race strife where they left off last November. As one who has been prominent in the bidding here expressed it: "A man can step on my toes once or twice or. perhaps three times, and get away with an excuse; but when he takes my p-dal extremities for a cinder path to run foot races over, I am going to strike back, and keep striking." This desire to get even with an owner for a bidding up case in the past, has been back of nine-tenths of the bidding up here and, naturally, is aggravated with each successive runup. This spirit cannot lie legislated against by the Jockey Club or any other body and will no doubt continue, so long as selling races are run and horse - men allow temper to dominate judgment and business sense. But no "Gipsy" owner, who is lucky enough to run second, can take half of the purse from the owner of the winner, just because he knows that owner will stand it to be mulcted, the division of the surplus shuts of intimidation and the money all goes to the horsemen. It is not the contention of the writer that the new rule smooths out all selling-race troubles. Something might occur as the season advances, to show up flaws and disadvantages which might not easily be overcome, but the claim that the operations at P.owie. under the new rule, stamps it a bad one, is not logical. OBSERVER.
