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Here and There on the Turf Continuity of Winter Racing. Success of- Bowie Stake Races. Marshall Cassidys Education. i Racing at long range will have to content the stay-at-homes until the Bowie track is thrown open again next April and the racing season in Kentucky is begun at Lexington. There will be plenty of this long-range racing and it will even be more continuous than have been the spring, summer and fall campaigns. Sunday is a big day at both Oriental Park in Cuba and Tijuana in Mexico. New Orleans has no Sunday racing, but with the other two tracks operating there is no such thing as an off day. It is natural that there is more fun to be on the grounds and see the horses race, but those who have to deny themselves that pleasure have every opportunity to follow the results closely. Charts graphically picture the running of a race and those who are interested can almost see the horses themselves as they read of their deeds. And never before has there been a greater interest in the far-away racing. The Bowie meeting, that closed Thanksgiving Day, was by long odds the most successful ever conducted by the Southern Maryland Agricultural Association, and it was a clean and formful meeting. Little occasion was found for ! disciplining the jockeys and the stewards acted promptly when it became necessary. It was a meeting that set an altogether new standard for the late fall season. Good horses there meant good racing and the success at Bowie will doubtless result in other stake races there for future meetings. Fall racing will always make good racing of stake-class horses possible. The horses come fit and ready through actual racing and to delay their retirement a couple of weeks will work no hardship on them, besides adding to the stable revenues not a little. That is why the Bowie patrons saw such horses in action as Lucky Hour, Fair Phantom, Rock-minister, Oui Oui, Captain Alcock, Bon Homme, Prudery, Surf Rider, Polly Ann, Missionary, General Thatcher, John Paul Jones, Blazes, Emotion, Hephaistos, Paul Jones, On Watch, Gentility, Paddle, Vigil, Forest Lore, Moonraker, Crocus and the various others that made the meeting such a remarkable one. Stake races in the spring would unquestionably attract good horses, but it could not be expected that such an array of good ones would be ready to race in April. Each year some good two-year-olds have been uncovered at Bowie and each spring the racing there has auspiciously opened the Maryland racing season. Such as it is, .they might as well have spring stake races there as at Havre de Grace. Bowie racing served to introduce young MarshalL Cassidy as a starter arid his work at the barrier when he took hold to finish out the meeting after George T. Miller was taken sick was excellent. Marshall Cassidy had long been in charge of the schooling barrier and that is good training. When the season opens there are weeks of schooling the new two-year-olds at the starting post. These young thoroughbreds must be taught to start at once when the barrier is released and must be taught to stand quietly in line before the start. This education of a two-year-old is of great importance. It takes a man with plenty of patience and abillity along that particular line to give the young horse his lessons. This is what Marshall Cassidy has been doing year after year. Then there is the bad actor. Mars Cassidy will take more pains with a fractious horse at the post than any other starter, but he has a schooling list. Some of the other starters will bar a fractious horse from racing, but Cassidy puts him on the schooling list. That means the horse must be taught to mend his post manners. Marshall Cassidy has presided over this barrier in the mornings. He has had to teach the outlaws to behave at the barrier and that is more of a job than teaching two-year-olds to start. "It is a hard job to teach an old horse new tricks." Young Cassidy has been the schoolmaster here. With his natural qualifications, this occupation should ably fit him for the post of starter over any race course.
