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TWO-YEAR-OLD RACING WAILS Turf II! Doctors from All Corners Sing "Swan Songs." . Americans Praise What British Condemn Imported Boosting the Basic Melody. BY SALVATOR. I have nfien been amused by imagining the case of the beginner in racing lore who endeavors to "post" himself by a study of the self-styled turf doctors, have always in the end found my powers of imagination beyond the task, and have abandoned it with the mental reservation that as the unfortunate in question was bound to lose his reason there was no reason why I should loxo mine. II is the old, old story: "Who shall decide when doctors disagree V" Xo doctors ever have disagreed with more continuous unanimity than those who prescribe for sufferers afflicted by what is known as the "breeding problem." The result is that the said sufferers either, through the Kindly aid of nature, ultimately recover, die in padded cells or become "confirmed cases," who wander about the world making its creatures and themselves miserable together. The pedigree doctors! And their wares! And the concoction thereof! Oh, for the pen of an O. Henry or Max Beerbohm with which to describe them! There is nothing else in the universe for a moment to be compared with them. To emulate our old friend Polonius. they stand alone, are facile prin-eeps and lie plus ultra. If you are a prey to monotony and long for menial dissipation, just attempt to follow them in their gyrations. The result will be a case of vertigo such as could in no other way be obtained, and though yon may never be quite the same afterward, at least you will have got your moneys worth of cerebral sensation. Incidentally it is well to have a pitcher of ice water at hand and a big bandage for your aching brow. REMEDIES NOT IN AGREEMENT. The other day I picked up one of our journals which features the sport of kings and found therein one of the periodical f ulniinations against excessive two-year-old racing. This struck a sympathetic chord in my bosom. It is one. of my pet theories. But I found as I read along that this was not tiie real crux of the argument. What the writer really was getting at was that the only way to save the American thoroughbred was by importing all our sires from the "other side." This was because, owing to the two-year-old racing abuse, we ruined everything we had for stud purposes before the wheat could bo winnowed from the chaff. Hence the imminent necessity of more and larger importations from Newmarket and other corners. Otherwise ruin stared us in the face. Then, as it chanced, I picked up an English journal of similar character and therein found the lucubrations of another etirer of turf ills, who. though writing from the more or loss holy soi: of Newmarket itself, was dilating upon what, do you suppose? Nothing else than the curse of too much two-year-old racing and how it was ruining that bulwark of the nation the British turf not only in so far as racing itself was concerned, but in the demoralization of the breed of horses, the last and greatest of all evils. Now, having read first the American if he an American commentator, and then the British, and put this and that together, how, I ask, is one to put out the fire that is burning the house down by pouring gasoline on ifi How are we coing to build up the demoralized American thoroughbred by filling him fuller and fuller of the blood of the den101.1Ii7.ed British one? As Frank Daniels used to warble in the "Wizard of the Nile:" "Star light, star bright, first star Ive seen tonight. Tell mc, tell nic, all that I wish to know!" It would seem, would it not, that only the stars in their courses could help lis out of such dire difficulties? EARLY RACING WAS HEALTHIER. The entertaining thing about it all, to me. as one who has watched the progress if you choose to call it that of the American thoroughbred for more years than it is necessary to confess, is the fact that in former days when imported blood was not nearly so prevalent in America as it is today, two-year-old racing was a small and comparatively unimportant feature of the sport, and sprinting, in any form, only in its infancy. In those benighted intervals, when the "Figure System" was as yet unborn, even in Bruce Lowes brain, and futurities far in the future, such a thing as a Derby at anything but the mile and a half Derby distance would have been jeered at, and the spectacle of mature thorougbieds at metropolitan meetings racing four or four and half furlongs was unknown. Anybody who at that period would have written of the "gameness" displayed in a dash of six or seven furlongs would have got pitying contempt. The now-despised "American families," were then in their glory, and those; of their members, with any pretentions to class, who couldnt as three-year-olds go a mile and a half in good style, and, if older, considerably farther, occupied humble corners in the hall of equine fame. The reign of the sprinter and the two-year-old began with the deluge of imported ldood, and as this deluge has continued to rise ever higher and higher, the decadence of the breed now so complained of has become steadily more marked. Consult, if you will, the tables of "Leading Sires of I lie Season." recently printed in Daily Racing Form, and especially sires of winning two-year-olds, if you desire light on this subject and do not want to take my word for it. In the connection, read the persistent charges of the critics that high-class aged handicap horses are fewer in number today than for years past and that the three-year-olds of tin; year are as a lot away below par. "Put two anil two together." Then do just a little good hard thinking and see if the total isnt four. Another source of entertainment is the unlimited and undiluted diet of doetrine that for so long has been, and is being, ladled out to us by the propagandists for the elimination of tin; "impure" and "not thoroughbred" American families. Because 0. ye gods and little fishes! "impure blood," particularly the said "impure blood," disables a horse from getting over a distance of ground. That here is where "blood" British "tells," and blood American falls by the wayside. Now, what is the most famous sprinting, family of American thoroughbreds of today? There can be but one answer that founded by Himyar through his son Domino and coming on down through Commando and his sons. Let us take Himyar for what lie was, its fountain head, and look for the source of the sprinting tendency. It will not take us long-to find it. Himyar was by Alarm, sou of English Eclipse. Alarm was the king niilor of his day. He never won but once at above a mile and then beat nothing of account. The pre-eminent trait of the get of his sire. Eclipse, was extreme, dizzy speed. Alarm was of pure British blood, his dam having been Aland, by Stoekwell. The "American stain" came into the family through the dam of Himyar, Hira, daughter of Lexington, and here we find nothing but stout, staying blood whichever way we turn, blood that produced champions at two and three miles and could go on and on "till the cows came home." We are led up to the Himyar-Domino-Coniiiiaudo family, however, and asked to contemplate them as horrible examples of the pernicious results of using "impure American blood" in the language of the newsboy crying his wares, "All about the terrible, terrible, awful !" Is it not, indeed, to laugh? But while one laughs one can think of the cunning salesmanship propaganda of it all.
