view raw text
Here and There on the Turf G. D. Widener Juveniles. Corn Tassel Retired. Jockey Ivan Parke. Entries at Fair Grounds. What promises to be one of the strong stables this year is that of Georga D. Widener. A. J. Joyner, who fitted St. James for the Saratoga Special and the Futurity, races that made him the best money-winning juvenile of 1923, will have thirty-six horses in his care this year and all but nine of them are already in the Belmont Park training quarters. The others will be brought on from Erdenheim on May 1, and it is proposed that they will be well advanced before being shipped. It was evident that Mr. Widener would have a strong string of two-year-olds this year when he purchased sixteen Nursery-bred yearlings from August Belmont last year. These, with seven that were bred by Mr. Widsner, make up the two-year-old division of the establishment, and it is a choicely bred and carefully selected band that will bear the colors this year. St. James, son of Ambassador IV. and Bobolink II., was not started after his victory in the Futurity at Belmont Park last fall, though at the time Mr. Joyner announced that his next race would be in the Pimlico Futurity. The "only reason he did not fill that engagement was that he was not training exactly to the liking of Mr. Joyner. A less careful trainer would doubtless have brought him to the post for that engagement, but the rest has done him a world of good and this time he looms up as possibly one of the most eligible of the three-year-olds for the great stake races for that age division. Mr. Joyner from the beginning insisted that St. James was a colt of high class, and hi? present appearance suggests that this opinion will Joe vindicated this year, as in 1923. It is pleasing to see that Richard T. Wilson has brought back his old gelding Corn Tassel. This son of Santoi and Cornfield was almost great when he was racing under the Wilson silks, but being a gelding his only real value was in racing. The old fellow was an honest horse as ever stood on iron and many of his hard-won races showed remarkable gameness. His Suburban victory of 1919, when he ran a mile and a quarter in 2:02 was his most brilliant accomplishment and he had several excellent races to his credit. Corn Tassel narrowly-missed being a great horse. He missed for the reason that he never showed ability to taks up heavy weights, but he accomplished much in real race horse fashion. The shame of it was that after all his brilliant racing Corn Tassel was so knocked about when he had lost his usefulness in top-notch company. The old fellow has had a decidedly rough time of it since he left ths care of Thomas" J. Hcaly, but he is back home now and it is assured that he will end his daj-s in comfort. It is always well that there should be a big dice of sentiment mixed iu with the racing of horses, and Mr. Wilson is to be commended for what he has done for the old gelding. Little Ivan Parke continues to pile up winning mounts that bid fair to see him again leading the jockeys in point of races won at the end of the 1924 racing season. This little fillow by riding through the winter months has a big advantage over those jockeys who confine their efforts to the New York, Kentucky and Maryland campaigns, and he is making every use of that advantage. It must be remembered that Parke has been meeting all comers in his short but brilliant career in the saddle. He fought his way to the top over the Kentucky tracks and is in no sense a winter development, where many of the best riders do not ride. There has been no element of luck in the fine record he has established. He is a natural rider. He is fearless and, while still a mite of a boy, is strong beyond his weight. Just so long as Parke is imbued with the ambition that enabled him to climb to the top of the heap he will be a leader by reason of his natural ability. He is just as ambitious now as when hs first appeared in the saddle. He should have years of usefulness before him, and his topping the list in 1923 is probably just his beginning in a lasting fame. Edward B. McLean made rather an important addition to his racing stable by the purchase of Gold Bug, three-year-old son ol Broomstick and Golden Rod, by AH Gold. This colt raced last year for H. P. Whitney, his breeder, and went through the season a maiden, but he has shown enough in private to warrant the belief that lis will not long remain in the maiden class this year. Gold Bug is well engaged arid will not lack for opportunity should he measure up to his engagements. An idea is furnished of the number of horses in training at New Orleans this winter when it is known that for the racing Friday there were ninety-seven horses named. This is an average of almost fourteen to a race, and with that there were fifty-two excluded from one race, the three-quarters dash for platers that was the second offering. And it must be remembered that Joseph McLennan had four of the seven races over distances greater than a mile. Two of the races were at three-quarters and the remaining race was a thre3-eighths dash for the two-year-olds. This shows just what winter racing has become and the vast number of thoroughbreds that arc in hard training all through the twelve months of the year. denies that Applegate ever told him the L. and N. had. offered 0,000 for thz track. Hoppar further states that in October, 1903, Applegate approached him on the ra?e track at Harlem and told him that if Perkins woull release him from the liability resulting from the stock not selling for the debt and give him 810,000 of Latonia Jockey Club stock he would drop the suit, and if Perkins accspted this proposition he need not turn over the 0,000 of stock until the debts on the club had been paid.
