view raw text
DERBY PR0SPECT1VES Mrs. R. M. Hoots to Try for Kentucky Blue Riband. 4 Expects to Win Coveted Race With Black Gold May Be a Filly Year. LOUISVILLE, Ky., Jan. 21. An Indian woman, Mrs. R. M. Hoots, of Oklahoma, has designs on the Kentucky Derby this year, and with some pretense as to the justness of her cause. Her bid for the rich race comes through Black Gold, a black colt by Black Toney Useeit, by Bonnie Joe. Breeding critics could scarcely give Black Gold a chance for such a gruelling contest as the mile and a quarter of the Derby on account of his mother, Useeit, which was never considered a race mare that wanted to go over three-quarters and . preferred even a shorter distance. Bonnie Joe, her sire, has a record for begetting short-distance winners during his long service in the Far West. Black Toney did sire the good horse Black Servant, which could stay over a long route, but beside this one most of the get of Black Toney were sprinters. All during 1923, however, breeding figures went sadly awry, for the best of the younger racers came from unheralded sources. Breeders who had spent immense sums in importing English thoroughbred sires were nonplussed when such colts as Black Gold, Sarazen, Wise Counsellor and others which were counted at the top of the two-year-old division when the year closed came off with the highest honors. Black Gold was a good colt all last year. He was even a champion at New Orleans and, while he was not so busy up the line, he proceeded to take the Bash-for Manor Stakes at Churchill Downs at the spring meeting and was the runner-up to Worthmore in the rich Breeders Futurity Stakes at Lexington. Black Golds last race over the mile route at Churchill Downs last November, which he won from a band of good youngsters, was an impressive one, he having run the mile in 1 :38. Black Gold is training now at New Orleans and reports from the southern city are that he is going along nicely. Mrs. Hoots, it is said, has been offered large sums for her colt, but she turns a deaf ear to all propositions. She believes that Black Gold is going to win the Derby this year with a superstitious credulity and nothing in the way of money can persuade her to part with her crack colt. Mrs. Hoots has already engaged stable room at Churchill Downs and says in a letter to superintendent Young she will be on hand with Black Gold six weeks before the Derby to put the colt through his final paces for the big race. GLIDE AND SANOLA. Harned Bros. and Jones, who have a pretentious string of horses in training at Churchill Downs, will nominate their two fillies Glide and Sanola for both the Kentucky Derby and the Oaks. The stable is particularly sweet on Glide for the Derby. This is tin questionably one of the grandest-looking I fillies that has graced the stables of Churchill Downs for many a day. She is of a type which denotes endurance and speed. Glide was purchased from Major Thomas C. McDowell as a yearling for a small amount, but she raced all the year like a high-class filly. She is by Manager Waite from Gossip and . in winning the Golden Red Stakes at Churchill Downs last fall defeated one of the best bands of colts and fillies in the West. Glide won 4,028 for her stable last year, starting nineteen times, winning seven of her races, was three limes second, four times third and five times unplaced. Sanola, in her first appearance, was confined to selling races, but she was so successful in these condition affairs that she was moved up a notch before the "halter men" could lead her off. Sanola is by Sain Anola and was purchased at the dispersal sale of George J. Long as a yearling. G It K E N Tit E E STAIJLES HOPE. There seems to be something in the air that this is to be a filly year and another Regret will come along to win the Derby. Inquiries from several western cities, strange to say, have made inquiries about Mrs. Payne Whitneys filly Tree Top. Where the "tip" on Tree Top could have originated is hard to say, but a leak has evidently sprung from the Greentree Stable that Tree Top is doing well and will be named for the Derby. Tree Top is bred well enough to win a Derby, even if she is a filly. Her record last year was good enough with a couple of slakes to her credit and 10,000 in winnings. Tree Top is by the inbred Ultimus from Thirty-third. Here is combined speed and staying qualities. Ultimus, now dead, among the many winners he left to the turf, is included the recent fashionable sire High Time, which had out Sarazen, the unbeaten two-year-old I of last year and one of the choices for the coming Derby. Tree Tops mother, Thirty-third, was a good race mare when she raced under the colors of the late Woodford Clay, of Bourbon County, Kentucky, and brought 1 Continued on twelfth page. . ! i DERBY PROSPECTIVES Continued from first pace. to the races such good ones as Buckhorn, Midway and others. Thirty-thirds produce destined to race this year is a brown filly by Brown Prince II. She was purchased at the Saratoga sales last summer by George M. Hendrie, the Canadian turfman, for the sum of ,000. Cartoonist "Bud" Fisher, who spent a fortnight recently looking over his big stable being trained at Douglas Park by Alex Gordon, was highly pleased with the progress being made by his Derby dependence, Mr. Mutt. He believes the Ballot colt will prove a real good one this year. While Mr. Mutt suffered somewhat from the excessive racing he got when he unseated jockey Merimee in the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes . at Churchill Downs last November and ran away four miles before being caught, the colt has filled out wonderfully during the winter period and has fully recovered from the cuts he received in that experience. Fisher, however, was more highly impressed with one of his two-year-olds than any of the other horses in his barn. This is the one by Fair Play Alburn, which he paid 0,000 for at the Saratoga sales. This colt "stacks up" something on the order of Man o War and aCts like a real racer. He is entered in all the big two-year-old stakes East and West and is expected to show real class when sent to the races. Nellie Morse, another of the Fisher three-year-olds, is doing nicely, as also is Little Jeff and Comic Artist, other thre6-year-olds which prob-. ably will be nominated for the Derby.
