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Twenty Years Ago Today Chief Turf Events of May 4, 1904 Racing at Jamaica, Worth, Louisville, Kansas City, San Francisco, Delmar and Union Parks at St. Louis. A turf authority recently on a visit to France said on his return to New York : "I have sen the principal breeding farms of the world and in my judgment that of M. Blanc is the finest i of them all. The great young sire Flying Fox is at the head of the stud, while the brood mares are, you might say, the very best that could be obtained anywhere." W. B. Gates, the aged son of Prince Royal, is the first performer in 1901 to be added to the list of winners of fifty races or over on the American turf. When the old bay gelding cap- turcd the ,000 handicap at Union Park April 23 he won his fifty fourth race in the six i seasons he has been on the turf. This horse I is a sample of longevity in the racing line for those who decry two year old racing, since he never started at that age. Mr. Colt has had the misfortune to lose one of his promising horses. Red Comyn. While galloping over the Withers course Sunday afternoon Red Comyn broke his leg and had to be destroyed. He was an imported horse, sent to J this country by Eugene Leigh for Pat Dunne. He was purchased by Mr. Colt last fall for jumping, but, like Douro, showed little inclination for this branch of the sport and had b?en entered in several important stakes on the flat. Concerning the running of the Kentucky Derby, judge Frazik Bryan had this to say : "All considered, the race was a fitting addition to the many bright records that the running of the event has brought. The favorite failed to make good, but the prize went to a lady, for Elwood carried the colors of Mrs. Laska Durncil and with true Kentucky gallantry the entire crowd, and it was the biggest in the history of the place, joined in congratulations. The thowing of Proceeds must be put down as the surprise of the race. That he might be beaten was admitted, but that he would trail home a distant last was beyond the expectation of even the calamity singers. When a call was made for the final effort there was a total collapse, sc-mething that one does not look for in a good horse. Brancas did not impress the critics as a horse for a long, hard trip and yet his showing was a fair one. It is true that he was fading in the last half furlong, still he had made a gallant struggle and after a let up, which he seems to have earned, he might turn the tables on those that led him to the wire in the Derby.
