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Here and There on the Turf Rivalry in the Derby. Success in the East. Chance for St. Louis. Spring Season at Hand. For each running of the Kentucky Derby there is always keen rivalry between the East and West. New York and Kentucky will always have this sporting rivalry in the big race and Maryland and Virginia more or less team up with New York, to make it the East, against the West. The Kentucky Derby is no longer a strictly Kentucky race, except that it has its decision at Churchill Downs, in Kentucky. It has just as strong an appeal in New York, Maryland and Virginia as it has in its native state and the rivalry between the racing sections has done much to ke;p up an interest and make it one of the most sought after races of the American turf. This year the East will make a particularly strong bid for the prize, but it must be a strong bid, for in John S. Wards Wise Counsellor Kentucky is rich, indeed, if there was no other candidate to represent the Blue Grass country. On two-year-old performance Mrs. Vander-bilts Sarazcn promises to be possibly the most feared of the eastern eligibles, but S. C. Hil-dreth has a strong hand to bear the silks of the Rancocas Stable, and Hildreth has a fashion of sending fit horses to the post. There are many others that will ship from the east who are not willing to concede victory to Wise Counsellor and altogether it is a revival of the old race that has a tremendous appeal as a sporting event. The East can boast of eight victories in the Kentucky Derby in the last ten runnings, but Kentucky has the consolation of knowing that only one of these, Regret, was eastern bred. This magnificent filly, and the only one of her sex to be its winner, is the product of Harry Payne Whitneys Brookdale Farm in New Jersey. Kentucky has a big lead and promises to hold a big lead in the honor of being the birthplace cf Kentucky Derby winners. Kentucky every year sends undeveloped Derby winners to the yearling market. They are purchased by Eastern turfmen and they become of the East in ownership. That has enabled the East to show so prominently in the winning column ai the Kentucky Derby. It is natural that Kentucky, with its vast breeding interests, many of them owned and controlled by eastern sportsmen and breeders, should always be in the forefront in the production of the best thoroughbreds, and it is a part of Kentucky glory that may remain to that state. But even there the East will make its challenge stronger and stronger every year. Harry F. Sinclair has already produced at least two potential candidates at his Rancocas Farm in New Jersey, in Mad Play and Stanwix. Harry Payne Whitney continues to send royally-bred good ones to the races from Brookdale, also in New Jersey. Willis Sharpe Kilmer and John Sanford are two New York breeders that make bids with New York bred colts and fillies, while Maryland and Virginia are both well represented by William Woodard, J. S. Cosden, the Jones Brothers Audley Farm and George D. Wide-ners Pennsylvania breeding establishments, and there are others of the eastern breeders who promise to make it harder and harder each year for Kentucky to remain at the top of the heap as the birthplace of Kentucky Derby winners. With the close of the long racing season at New Orleans Monday Joseph A. Murphy will have an opportunity to devote some of his time to the coming racing season at the Hawthorne track in Chicago and will also have time for his St. Louis work, looking to a revival of the sport there. Judge Murphy has been working earnestly for several years in an effort to restore racing in St. Louis, and he has frequently been heartened into belief that the revival was at hand. From time to time he has met with disappointments in his fight, but has kept right at it and now he proclaims the chance for bringing racing back on a firm and lasting basis is better than ever before. The Chicago racing is an established fact, but there still remains much to be done in the way of preparation for the meeting. With St. Louis the campaign has not reached that far, but it is well within the bounds of possibility that 1925 will see the broadening out of the western circuit with St. Louis an important link. With the racing at Havana rapidly approaching its conclusion, there promises to come dull days for the faithful who keep close watch of the thoroughbreds from one years end to the other. It will not be for long, but when the long meeting at Oriental Park is closed there will be no racing except that offered by faraway Tijuana until the opening at Bowie. Probably it will be a week that will ! have to be endured. It is none too long for the horsemen who ship from a winter track to Maryland, but, of course, there are some who will miss the sport even for that short space of time. Just two weeks hence and the horses will be called to the post at Bowie. That is the real opening of the spring racing season. It is more of an opening of the eastern season this year than ever before. It is a meeting that will bring good horses out of retirement and in no sense a continuation of the winter sport as it was considered when the Southern Maryland Association first established ita early spring racing. Time was when the Benning course of the old Washington Jockey Club was more or less considered a sort of stopgap between New Orleans and New York. At that time the horses destined for a Kentucky campaign would move up the other way to Memphis, Nashville Hot Springs, Little Rock, Lexington, Louisville and Latonia, others continuing on to Detroit and on through the Canadian circuit by way of Windsor. Now that Tennessee and Arkansas no longer have racing, the Kentucky season begins at Lexington, this year on April 28, and those who would race sooner must of necessity swing over to Maryland. This is another reason for the importance of Bowie. There are some of the Kentucky stables that will be willing to rest at the close of a winter campaign until the Lexington opening, but many others will fill in with Bowie and Havre de Grace before making the journey West. There will come many opportunities for the best horses at the Bowie meeting, and reservations that have already been made assure that the class of racing should be better than has ever been offered before at that course. Joseph McLennan has issued the book for the meeting, which continues from April 1 to April 12, and it is the usual McLennan book that affords a wide range of races for horses I of varying ability. There will be seven races a I day and a good proportion of races over distances of a mile or more, though the sprinters have ample opportunity. The opening day attraction is the Inaugural Handicap, with ,C00 added, at seven-eighths. The entries for this are to close March 27 and the weights are to be announced March 29. Then there is a second ,000 raca to be run the closing day of the meeting. This is the Prince George Handicap, at a mile and a sixteenth, entries to which close April 9, with the weights to come out the following day. In addition to these there is a ,500 race and several of ,500, while no purse has a lesser value than 1,200 added. This is spring racing that is strictly worth while.
