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Here and There on the Turf Two-Year-Olds and Their Elders. Protection for Racers Required. Good Horses on Sale. For the opening day of the Yonkers meeting of the Empire City Racing Association Monday an all ages race is carded. It is at a mile-distance and, with forty-five entries, there are four two-year-olds in the eligible list. Three of these are named by John E. Madden and the other by Charles A. Stoneham. The Madden eligibles are Vanderburg, Heremon and Ethnea, while the Stoneham entry is McKee, one that was purchased from Madden. John E. Madden lqng ago demonstrated that the best of the older horses may be beaten by two-year-olds in the fall. It wras in 1897 that he beat none other than Ben Brush with Plaudit, while in 1903 he took the measure of McChesney with The Minute Man. Plaudit won his famous victory over Ben Brush at Graves-end September 29 in a mile and a sixteenth dash, in which the two-year-old took up 90 pounds, while the Dwyer four-year-old carried 126. Another in the same race was Dr. Cat-lett, a three-year-old, and he was third. And Ben Brush was the horse of the year. He had just beaten Ornament in the Second Special at a mile and a quarter. He had won the First Special. In the Omnibus Handicap he had beaten Hastings along with Clifford, Rondo, Ben Holladay, Lehman and Free Advice. The Brighton Handicap had seen him winner from The Friar and Volley and he was the Suburban winner of the year. It was such a horse that John Madden beat with his two-year-old Plaudit on September 29, 1897, over a mile and a sixteenth distance. When Madden started The Minute Man against McChesney, six years later, there were those who thought he was asking too much of his juvenile, but he called their attention to what he had done with Plaudit. He was supremely confident before each race and his two-year-old justified his confidence. The Minute Man won his race at, Sheepshead Bay September 4, 1903, and he took up 92 pounds to 122 on McChesney, then a four-year-old. The other in the race was the three-year-old Ithan under 112 pounds. Just as Plaudit won all the way, The Minute Man was sprinted into an early lead and the big chestnut son of MacDuff and Manola Mason was beaten all the way. Ben Brush was the topnotch handicap horse of his year, while McChesney was at the top when he was beaten. Each went on to remarkable success and in the stud the Ben Brush blood did much for the American thoroughbred. McChesney was sent to the Argentine Republic by the late J. B. Haggin before he had much of a chance in the stud. Plaudit proved a wonderful stock horse for Madden when he was through with racing, but unfortunately The Minute Man was so seriously injured in a race at Brighton Beach at the close of his two-year-old season that he had to be destroyed. These are only two of many instances of where the two-year-olds have beaten older horses over a considerable distance, but they are remembered by reason of the high class of the older horses beaten in September and October and there should be more races for all ages at this season of the year. The inhuman doping of Gladiator at Jamaica Sunday night was another evidence of the lack of proper night patrol at the Long Island tracks. It should surely be possible to have the race courses protected against such brutal vandals. As was the case in the Tufter sponging, this offense was discovered in time to prevent the horse being started, as was intended. But that is not the question. It is the abuse of the horses that must be wiped out. This can only be done by the most careful policing of the tracks at night. Their attacks are always made on prospective starters and that would narrow it down to the trainer seeing to it that when he has a horse named to race the following day that horse be carefully guarded right up to post time. Of course it is a deplorable condition of affairs when this becomes necessary, but it would at least protect the horse from such attacks and it ought to be worth while. Horses have been virtually ruined by just such villains as administered the drugs to Gladiator and it does not speak well for racing if these miscreants cannot be stamped out for all time. At the end of each racing season there are always sales of horses in training and most of them include bargains for those who would race through the winter, but as a general proposition these are sales of inferior discards from big stables. This is not the case in the sale to be conducted at Jamaica today by the Thoroughbred Sales Company. Samuel C. Hildreth is selling an even dozen from the Rancocas Stable, only for the reason that his string has outgrown his stable. He has not stalls enough for his horses and it was imperative that some of them be sold. The horses he is offering are thoroughbreds, well able to make good anywhere at any season of the year. They are not winter discards in any sense of the word. The same might be said of the other consignments to the same sale, when H. C. Fisher is offering Violinist, Avalanche, Adventuress and Audacity. They are sold to make more room in the stable. Altogether it is rather a remarkable sale of horses.
