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Here and There on the Turf Exterminators Sire. Chatterton Derby Hope. When the American sire list was last published it revealed the fact that McGee was its leader, with Exterminator, Pirebrand arid others of his big family battling lustily to keep him there. Whereby a bit of retrospect is not without its interest. In 1901 Edward Corrigan, then a man of wealth and of importance in American racing, gathered some horses and jockeys and betook himself to England to sample the style of racing there. He did not set things afire over there, but he won some races. More important, he exercised his undoubted good judgment of horseflesh and from time to time picked up a horse until he had quite a band in possession, which he brought over here, to the benefit of the American turf, as time revealed. One of them was McGee. Another was the fine mare Rose Tree, which in time became the mother of the idolized Roamer. With Rose Tree, ridden by that expert Charles. Thorpe, he won the Wokingham Stakes of that year at Ascot. She was not considered to have a chance, but at around 100 to 1 Corrigan backed her so well that she paid all the expenses of his English foray, with a good margin over. Another horse he acquired and brought over was Scintillant, a brilliant racer in England and this country, but a veritable fiend in disposition. As a sire he was a failure. McGee was raced as a two-year-old in 1902, but not much, and without making any particular impression. But he developed as he grew older into an extremely fast and successful race horse. When a three-year-old in 1903 he won nine put of eighteen races and was but twice unplaced. In 1904 he had a strenuous campaign and, starting in thirty-three races, won fifteen and was placed in twelve more. In the course of this racing he made several records, since replaced. Altogether, McGee was a whale of a race horse and it is worth bearing in mind that it is due to the discernment and enterprise of the hot-tempered Master of Hawthorne that thousands are .now able .to; take joy in the superb achievements of Exterminator. McGecs lineage can hardly be called fashionable. A peculiarity is that his sire, White Knight, never raced and only begot one foal; that one, of course, being McGee. To such a slender thread we owe so much in this country. Still, slight as it is, it goes back twice to the "emperor of stallions" Stockwell and thrice to Stockwells brother, Rataplan, as well as to the immortal mares Queen Mary and Pocahontas. McGees mere existence was an accident ; his coming to the United States was accidental. However, the two Kentucky Derby winners, Exterminator and TJonerail, to say nothing of Firebrand, Horron, Marvin May, Viva America I j j and "a host of other fleet racers, tear unim- peachable testimony to the fact there has been nothing accidental about his success in the stud. In winning the Falls City Handicap for his Chicago owner Chatterton showed there was some reasonable grounds for the hopeful backing he received in the ante-post betting over the Kentucky Derby. He is well bred and fast. Mr. Kelley has a useful stable and Chicago people would like to see his horses help in the revival of Chicago racing at Hawthorne j next month. In the victories of Chatterton at Louisville and Dunlin in the rich Hopeful . Stakes, Fair Play has received an important addition to his account in the American sire list of 1922. .
