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Here and There on the Turf Belmont Parks Winter Colony, j Some Post-Season Racing". Foreign Hurdlers in American Steeplechasing. Eastern View of Hawthorne. Miss Star a Topnotcher. Belmont Park is beginning to settle down to its long season of winter quarters for horses that go into retirement during the cold months. Already several strings are there gradually going out of training, while a great number of yearlings are having their kindergarten lessons in racing. There was an important addition to the colony with the arrival of sixteen j yearlings, the property of August Belmont, chairman of the Jockey Club. These were brought from Saratoga by Louis Tauber. They are a fine-looking band that even at this early time appear well able to maintain the fame of the Nursery Stud when they are sent to the races. J. Simon Healy, who did so well with the modest Syndicate Stable during the early racing this year, is another that has holed in for the winter at Belmont Park. This year he is going into winter quarters with a much more promising string of yearlings than he had at the same time last fall. They are learning their lessons well and such of them as have had yearling trials have shown enough to convince Healy that he has several winners in his string. This colony is constantly being added to and Belmont Park promises to be more popular than ever before among the horsemen who remain in New York through the cold months. When the New York racing season comes to a close at the Yonkers track of the Empire City Racing Association October 2S, there will still remain one day of racing for the stay-at-homes. This is the election day program that will be run by the United Hunts Racing Association at the Belmont Park Terminal course November 7. George Gall has already received many entries for that da of racing and at present is receiving subscriptions for the Between the Flags Steeplechase, that is to be one of the features. This is a race over three miles and a half of the timber course and requires that gentlemen shall ride. It is confined to the hunters and is tremendously popular with the amateur sportsmen. The fact that it has ,000 added makes it additionally attractive this year and it is sure to bring together a good field. This is only one of the features of the program. The hunt meetings that have already been conducted have demonstrated that the amateurs are taking a lively interest and everything points to a pleasing election day entertainment. The success of Al J. Davis English ex-hurdler Ards, eight-year-old son of Sarajax and Natia, by Soliman, may result in other English and Irish hurdlers being imported for American steeplechasing. This handsome big chestnut demonstrated that the foreign hurdler makes a successful American steeplechaser. Some of the earlier importations of crosscountry horses were notable, but many of them, while faultless jumpers, were too deliber ate for the short distances and the small fences of American steeplechasing. With the ex-hurdlers it is different. They have the necessary speed for the short courses and the jumps are in no sense difficult for a foreign hurdler. Ards is unfortunately an unsound horse and that prevented his reaching a greater degree of fame before he was turned out for the year. Earnest Heider still hopes to have him back next year, fit to race with the best of them. But his bad legs are a serious handicap. Ards was a winner of his first three races. Then in the Broad Hollow Steeplechase he unseated Crawford at the third fence. His only other start was in the Corinthian Steeplechase, in which he went dead lame, fell, was remounted and finished second. It was after that race that he was fired and turned out for the year. Mr. Davis is now abroad and it is probable he will make another purchase. If he does he will again select a hurdler of experience, as was Ards, which in 1920 won his last four races over hurdles in England.- Here is how a New York writer sums up the Hawthorne meeting: "With the racing season at Hawthorne drawing to a close there comes to an end a meeting that has conclusively proved that Chicago wants racing. It was a fine big thing for the sportsmen of the Illinois Jockey Club to con- duct the meeting. At the time it was first proposed there were many who doubted its success. These doubters were not confined to the opponents of racing. There were men who devoutly hoped that racing would come back, but they feared such a thing was not possible. But racing has been brought back and it has been brought back in a fashion to leave no doubt of its popularity. It will take some time for Chicago to return to its proper place, the place it occupied in the old days of Washington Park and the American Derby, but there has been a beginning and a beginning that must have been pleasing beyond the fondest hopes of the gentlemen who made the meeting at Hawthorne possible. In future meetings, now that the sport has been established, it will be possible to attract a greater number and much better horses, and with this improvement in their quality there will be increases in the money given. As a matter of fact the fields during this meeting have been encouragingly large and the contests have been form-ful. The racing has been conducted along lines that could give no offense, and altogether it is a big gain for the American turf to have Chicago back in the regular racing circuit." Miss Star, by her victory in the Hiawatha Handicap at Jamaica Wednesday, made an important stride in the direction of the top of the two-year-old filly division. The daughter of Hesperus and Istar had in other races proved that she was a filly of extreme speed. But the Hiawatha Handicap was different and called for ability to stay, as well as run fast. It was a race through a particularly difficult, muddy track and it was a race that furnished a test of her gameness. She was found not wanting and demonstrated that the difficult going was not a bar for her. She also took up within one pound of her scale weight when she carried 118 pounds and under that impost was giving away weight to such fillies as Equinoctial, How Fair, Amusement, Untidy and Gadfly. She was in receipt of eight pounds from Edict, the Spinaway Stakes winner, two pounds from Best Love, and one pound from Suweep. Amusement, the one that chased her home, was in receipt of nine pounds, while How Fair, badly beaten for second place by her stablemate, was in receipt of three pounds. As for those that attempted to give weight to Miss Star they were badly beaten, Suweep, Edict and Best Love all being well outside the money. And the Hiawatha Handicap brought together as fine a band of two-year-old fillies as has been seen in any one race this year. About the only absentees of the topnotchers were Willis Sharpe Kilmers Futurity winner Sallys Alley, Harry Payne Whitneys Cresta and J. C. Milams Dust Flower, winner of the Flash Stakes.
