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NEW ORLEANS RACING NEAR Less Than Three Weeks for Opening of Sport at Jefferson Park. Fair Grounds Officials rian to Throw Every Safeguard Around tlio Racing O. Henry Promising. NEW ORLEANS, La., Nov. 10. With the opening of the winter racing season less than three weeks away, and with the steady influx of horses, both to Jefferson and the Fair Grounds, with automobiles bearing the licenses of outside states, and with new faces filling the streets and corridors of hotels, New Orleans is beginning to take on a racing air. The local situation, from a racing view point, is "sitting pretty." Public sentiment is strongly with the present management at the Fair Grounds and the improved class of owners and horses that are shipping for the meeting would indicate that the new regime also has the endorsement of outside breeders and horsemen. It is customary at ach winter meeting for an association to claim that it will have a better class of horses and a greater patronage than any previous year, but all indications conservatively point to this situation in New Orleans. The latest applicant for stalls at the Fair Grounds is Jim McClelland, who is bringing a string of horses belonging to Mr. E. F. Simms. This rounds out millionaires row and New Orleans has never been able to boast of the same class of owners before in its history of racing. The management is planning to throw every possible safeguard around the racing. A special room for the tracks official veterinarian will be constructed in the paddock so that careful examination of the horses may be made. It is believed that this will tend to the protection of owners. If it is known that each horse in a race will be subject to careful examination of its nostrils and its general appearance there will be no inducement for the gray wolves of the turf to attempt to tamper with them. It Avill also guard against sick horses being started in races. "Very often a horse will run a bad race and investigation will develop that it is coming down with some fever or some other ailment. If a horse appears to be dull his temperature can be taken and if it i3 found to be above normal the horse can be excused from the race and in this way the owner and public will be protected. The valet system will also come in for considerable care and revision. When J. B. Campbell, who will have charge of the scales and the valets arrives in the city he and general manager Dymond and his assistant, Joseph A. Murphy, will discuss. this matter at length, and some means devised, not only to take the enormous expense from the jockeys, but also to guard against some of the abuses which have crept into the present system. Continued on twelfth page. NEW ORLEANS RACING NEAR Continued from first page. The question of jockeys agents will also be discussed, and an attempt made either to abolish them entirely or to curtail their privileges. It has been customary when an agent has a fashionable jockey in charge that owners would be compelled to divulge every stable secret before they could secure the services of such a rider. This system is unsound and some effort will be made to bring a radical change. There is a horse stabled at the Fair Grounds, the racing of which this winter will be watched with considerable interest by the rail birds. It is the three-year-old O. Henry. Every now and then some really useful horse comes out of the bushes and since Ogden won the Futurity people have been a bit chary in passing hasty judgment on horses from the northwest. O. Henry was bred by W. W. Trowbridge of John Day, Oregon. "When O. Henry won the Hudson Bay-Handicap at Vancouver at a mile and a quarter, people began to sit up and take notice. When he followed this up by winning the Oak Bay Handicap at Victoria, at a mile and a sixteenth, experts were willing to believe that he might have some quality. At the State Fair at Dallas he hooked up with Delante, a rather useful three-year-old In the middle west and beat him in the fastest mile ever run in Texas. Then he gave Planet, which had been running good races with the best horses in Canada, fifteen pounds on the scale and beat him in a canter. People then began to inquire into what this ; , bush horse was. Investigation showed that his quality came by right of lineage. His sire is Discontent, a son of Star Shoot, which needs no introduction to the racing public and his dam, Ida B., was by His Highness, which won the Futurity in Dave Gideons colors. The racing of this newcomer when he hooks up with some class this winter will be watched with the keenest interest. The stables of J. L. Holland, part of Mose Goldblatts, li. McKeag, W. A. Baumgartncr, Milo Shields, TV. F. Knebelkamp, Lon John-Bon, D. Pw. McDaniel, William Daniels, Clyde Freeman and -many others are already here and by the end of the week there will be over five hundred horses stabled between the Fair Grounds and Jefferson. The full condition of the stakes to be run during the winter at the Fair Grounds have been received from Joe McLennan, the racing secretary. Mr. McLennan has made all the stakes of the late closing kind so that he will have the full benefit of horses in training at the very top of their form. Thus, for instance the New Years Handicap, with 55,000 added, will close on December 25, and in their regular order. The full list of stakes follows: New Tears Handicap, Tuesday, January 1. .,000 Fontchartrain Ilandicap, Saturday, January 5. 2,000 A. B. Dade Memorial, Saturday, January 12. . 2,000 Rex Ilandicap, Saturday, January 19 2,000 Momus Ilandicap, Saturday, January 2G. .... 2,000 . Comus Handicap, Saturday, February 2 2,090 ! rroteus Ilandicap, Saturday, February 9 2,000 Crescent City Ilandicap, Saturday, February 1G 5,003 George Washingtons Birthday Handicap, Friday, February 22 2,000 Carroll ton Handicap, Saturday, February 23. 2,000 New Orleans Handicap, Saturday, March 1. . . 2.TJ00 Mardi Gras Handicap, Tuesday, March 4.... 5,000
