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BREEDING TELLS WHEN PUT TO TEST Mad Hatter Proves This in Latonia. Championship Stakes Sir Bartons Greatness Emphasized. BY EXILE. The first running of the Latonia Championship Stakes may be best described in, two words no race. The consummate ease in which Mad Hatters win was gained speaks little for the high-class and quality of those racing against him. Along about the half-mile ground in the second time around Mad, Hatter, which had been racing along, his head in his chest, on the outside, clear of the flying mud, suddenly shot past his opponents, passing them is though they were hacks, coming on to win absolutely as his rider pleased from the struggling Sway and the incapable Stockwell. What sort of a horse then must be Sir Barton, which, giving no less than twenty-seven pounds, came from behind to smother the Championship winner one week previously in the running of the Maryland Handicap. Even so. Thunderclap finished astern of Mad Hatter and Thunderclap last Saturday beat both Exterminator and Cudgel, in receipt of much poundage of course, for the Annapolis Handicap. All of this proves two things first, that you cannot eat your cake and have it; in other words, breeders annually sell the best, or those they think the best, of their yearlings at Saratoga or other points east, retaining only those they do not con-;ider likely to attract the attention . of the connoisseurs of the east. Second, breeding assuredly does tell when the weights are up in races run over . a long distance of ground. For some time past I have made a determined stand in favor of the blending of the strains of Herod, Matcliem and Eclipse as being the surest plan by which race horses may be bred. By race horses I do not intend to imply smart two-year-olds, sprinters and purse horses, stop gaps and fillers these should be termed. At all events in this A. D. 1919 the blending of the blood plan of mating has all the .best of it. Did I say that the blending does not work out to any great advantage in the production of two-year-old racers? When, however, a real champion comes to hnnd, such as Man o War, perhaps the best two-year-old I ever saw run, it would appear that the blend is equally successful. Fair Play, sire of Man o War, is of Matcliem descent through Hastings and Australian, his dam. Mahubah, ,by the Eclipse - horse Rock Sand, and liberal infusions of Herod arc brought into the pedigree by way of Hermits dam twice the Thor-:nanby of Rouge Rose and Macaroni once through the dam of Gnlliard and again through Mizpah, laughter of Macaronis son Mncgregor. Sir Barton is bred Eclipse to Hercd. Hi sire. Star Shoot, is if Eclipse descent, and his dam, Lady Sterling, by Hanover, the best brood mare sire there ever was. Hanover traces back to Herod via Glencoe, Selim and Woodpecker. Exterminator, winner of this years Saratoga Cup, in which lie completely polished off . Purchase, is another bred Eclipse to Herod. Jim Gore, sire of Exterminators dam. Fair Empress, is also a Glencoe line horse, and to make things quite complete along comes this Mad Hatter, which is bred a la Man o War, by Fair Play, out of the Rock Sand mare. Madcap. Tills is no theory, only stubborn fact; ?nme tiling yesterday, today and tomorrow, and turf history our guide. On account of Mad Hatters win of the Latonia Championship Stakes, his sire. Fair Play, now becomes the leading winning sire of the year, his offspring, iii first moneys alone, having earned upward of 00,000. Also Rock Sand, sire of Madcap, stands in an unassailable position, as leading winning brood mare sire. During the present year- fifteen of the daughters of Rock Sand have produced the winners of fifty-four races, worth nearly 70,000. This speaks volumes for the excellence of the daughters of Rock Sand as brood mares and the breeder of bloodstock who is so fortunate as to possess any one of them may count himself lucky, indeed.
