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, ■ 1 I | j Twenty Years Ago Today Chief Turf Events of April 9, 1903 Racing at Washington, Memphis and Oakland. Frank Carrs starting gate was shipped to Kinloch Park. This starting device will be given a thorough trial during the meeting. John E. Madden is going to train jumping horses on a different plan than has ever before been followed in this country. For this purpose he will establish a school for jumpers at his farm. Hamburg Place, and this year will see the beginning of his experiments. Madden will take big awkward two year olds and give them a taste of the jumps as soon as they show that they do not have a turn of speed sufficient to make them big winners on the flat. Once they learn jumping they will be allowed to mature and then be schooled once more and then sent out for the big stakes. Thus, they can be developed gradually and be sound, healthy animals in stead of broken-down racers. The first product of the Madden system is Auto, a horse that will start in the East this year. He was a big colt and wanted to jump over fences from the start. Since learning the sport he has filled out and is seventeen hands high and well muscled. It is the intention of Mr. Thomas Hitchcock. Jr., to give up flat racing entirely. Hereafter his interest will be devoted to steeplechasing and hurdle racing exclusively. Mr. Hitchcock believes that with more people taking up that branch of the sport and giving it the attention it should have, cross country events will come into greater prominence and eventually reach the level that obtains in England and on the Continent. It is his intention to establish probably the best stable of jumping horses in the country, and there is little doubt that he will have much to do with the uplifting of th? sport on the metropolitan tracks. That steeplechasers in England race longer and to a greater age than they do in this country is attributed by Mr. Hitchcock, one of the foremost authorities on the subject in America, to the difference in the courses in the two countries. Mr. Hitchcock says that the only steeplechase course in this country that can be compared to those in England k the one at Saratoga. The others, he declares, are faulty and, at best, not in condition to permit a horse racing over them for any length of time.
