view raw text
EASTERN DERBY HOPES Dozen or More Prominent Candidates to Be Trained at Havre. Climatic Conditions Favorable for Early Preparation Crack Filly Happy Thoughts There. HAVRE DE GRACE, Md.f March 22. This spring, as for a dozen years past, the beautiful race course of the Harford Argicultural and Breeders Association, -which occupies the plateau of a wood-fringed promontory overlooking placid Chesapeake Bay one mile from here, -will be the training place of a dozen or more of the Easts promising Kentucky Derby prospects. On the track on which Ten Point, Sir Barton, Billy Kelly, "Wildair, Upset, Paul Jones, Blazes, Tryster, Lucky Hour, My Play, Martingale, Dunlin, Vigil and Wilderness and other famous Derby hopefuls, some of which got to the post to acquit themselves with distinction, others of which did not because of training casualties or sickness, prepared in their respective years will presently be galloping Senator Norris, Cockney, Diogenes, Donaghee, Lord Baltimore II., Tree Top, Pepp, Bowman, Gold Bug and Happy Thoughts. Before the April racing of the Harford Association, that begins the 16th to finish out the month, shall have advanced far some of H. P. Whitneys colts will be down from Brookdale, New Jersey. Possibly, also, one or two of the more precocious of the Rancocas prospects will show up, nothwithstanding Rancocas Farm boasts of the finest training1 track, one mile around, to be found anywhere in the United States. Happy Thoughts, the best of last years two-year-old fillies, is already here. James W. McClelland and Roy Waldron brought her from Edward F. Simms Xalapa Farm of Kentucky some six weeks back. My Play, Man o Wars good brother, came with her. Happy Thoughts, one of the finest types ever, will get a Kentucky Derby preparation provided she discovers between this and mid-April stuff that may justify the assumption that she can compete with colts. Sarazen beat Happy Thoughts at Laurel Park last fall in a 5,000 special, but so easily as to have convinced most persons who saw him do it that he had not met the Happy Thoughts of the Grab Bag Handicap at Saratoga and subsequent races at Belmont Park and Aqueduct. HO SUDDEN VARIATIONS. Xo better training place than Havre de Grace for Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Park stakes candidates could be found. The climate, tempered by the nearness of the Harford Associations plant to , sea water, is mild and equable. It is notably free from sudden and violent variations. The resilient cushion of the excellently laid out mile track is the delight of horsemen who race on the Atlantic seaboard. The ,000 Chesapeake Stakes renewal of April 30, a gallop of one mile and a sixteenth for three-year-old colts and fillies, will be a veritable Preakness Stakes and Golden Jubilee Derby trial race. Diogenes, Golden Jubilee Derby hope of Mrs. Walter M. Jeffords of Philadelphia, winner of the 5,000 Hopeful at Saratoga, is due in the first week of April with Cockney. These colts have been training at Glen Riddle Farm on Marylands eastern shore, where Man o War, the great, put in the winter that separated his first and second racing seasons. Robert A. Smith has them in charge. Cockney is a son of Great Britain and LAvenir that showed well a time or two last year and was better in private than under silks. Diogenes has matured handsomely and is sound. DOXAGIIEE ALREADY GALLOPING. Donaghee, which, after much bad racing luck, finished third to Tree Top and Rinkey in the last ,500 . Endurance Handicap revival at Bowie, that another dash of one mile, is now at Bowie and will race there. He belongs to James W. Bean, of AVashing-ton, a breeder of thoroughbreds in Maryland on a considerable scale. Gelded since the running of the Endurance Handicap, Donaghee has become a kinder horse than he was last year and easier to handle. For trainer Smith he has within the fortnight ran quarters of the Bowie course several times in faster than 24 seconds. Very likely Donaghee is farther advanced toward racing condition than any Golden Jubilee candidate training in the North and East. He will be a genu-ino eastern Derby participant if he gets to the post at Louisville. A son of The Cur-ragli and Babel Straus, Donaghee was bred by John Sanford at Hurricana Farm in New York State. Lord Baltimore II., conqueror here last September of Big Blaze and Rinkey in the Continued on second page. EASTERN DERBY HOPES Continued from first pace. 0,000 Eastern Shore Handicap, will come up from Virginia, where he has wintered under the eye of the veteran, William Garth, in the second week of April. Lord Baltimore II., son of Trap. Rock and Federal Girl, is another out and out easterner. He was bred by Captain Philip M. Walker at the Page-brook Stud of Clarke County, Virginia. He is the fast Derby prospect of the stable of J. S. Cosden of Baltimore, Ral Parrs partner in the ownership of Paul Jones, Kentucky Derby winner of 1920. Tree Top, Pepp and Bowman will likely come down from Belmont Park a week or ten days before the beginning of Havre de Grace spring racing. Tree Top, Endurance Handicap winner of last November, is a daughter of Ultimus and Thirty-third, and a half-sister to Buckhorn and Midway. Buckhom won a Brooklyn Handicap renewal. 51 id way finished third to Omar Khayyam and Ticket in the Derby of 1917, and won the Kentucky Handicap of 1919. Tree Top looks better on two-year-old form than either Buckhorn or Midway did at the beginning of their three-year-old season. Scott Harlan has wintered Tree Top at Belmont Park for Mrs. Payne Whitney. Pepp and Bowman appear to be the band of Derby prospects of the stable of Max Hirsch. Pepp, a son of Broomstick and Seamstress, is a home-bred colt belonging to George W. Loft, a member of the Racing Commission of New York, from whom Hirsch won a Belmont Park Futurity with Pepp. Hirsch thought very well of Pepp last fall. He did not race the Broomstick colt through the summer. Bowman is Hirschs own Derby colt. A son of Spanish Prince II. and Veuve Cliquot, Bowman is a half-brother of Oceanic, he the son of The Finn that defeated Lucky Hour, Paragon II. and Exterminator in the 5,000 Washington Handicap at Laurel Park in 1922. Gold Bug is Edward Beale McLeans best three-year-old. He wintered at Benning trade .