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A Year of Fallen Idols BY SALYATOIt. . It is with feelings of dismay that for some time past I have been surveying the racing situation. This ever-current Question that the survey prompts being: What has happened to the thoroughbred breed, not only at home but abroad as well? Have form, class and all the rest of those qualities for which he has so long been famed suddenly dislocated themselves from his make-up? They appear nonexistent, everywhere or practically so. Or, is their disappearance only the outcome of an inevitable evolution the result of modern high-pressure racing methods against which the so-called reactionaries have for some time past been protesting as bound to produce, in the long run, exactly such a condition? From the beginning of the season nothing lias been seen and heard but the crashing fall of cne turf idol after another. It were a gratuitous cruelty to enter into the mortuary statistics here at home. The sickening succession of smash-ups of loudly trumpeted, high-priced and still more highly touted speedsters no more elegant term applies, as one traces its gory trail through the mazes of the charts, gives one a gone feeling in the pit of tho stomach and a sinking of the heart that ends with a bump on the basement floor. Where, oh where, can one "point with pride" to a race horse whose campaign to date has not emphasized the fact that class, consistency, reliability and all tho rest of the assets of great performers have gone glimmering? Many people have been clinging to the long and lean form of Black Gold like the proverbial drowning man to a spar. But he, too, has gone crashing down most dismally and even if he had not, could any turfman of experience and judgment really "bank on" a Black Gold to save the day? MEDIO CUE DERBY FIELD. As a matter of fact, the "Derby" he won at New Orleans meant nothing as an indication of high class. And as for the other one that he won at Louisville, while it was a "big event" in one sense, in another it was a melancholy affair, indeed. Never in the history of racing in America was so impressive an example given of the triumph of mediocrity, or worse. The Kentucky Derby of 1924, to characterize" it truly, was contested by a lot of colts, little, if any, above the selling plater in class. A really high-class colt would have made them the winner included look like hacks. That is the plain and unblinking fact, however unpleasant it may appear on paper. There is not a two-year-old or a three-year-old on the horizon at the present moment over which the discriminating horseman can pump up a particle of enthusiasm, no matter how hard he may try. In the aged class, we have as the hero of the hour that hardy perennial, Mad Hatter, which wins "gloriously," so the dispatches assert, today and tomorrow will, perhaps, run tenth. We have Hephaistos, which can do considerable under moderate imposts, but whose career as a whole will never send his name thundering down the corridors of time not by a thundering sight. But the spectacle of a horse of any age or class that can be depended to win two events of any importance in sequence and give the impression of ability to win the next one, also, we will look for in vain. The English situation is akin to our own almost a parallel, in most regards. The double defeat of Epinard in France came like an earthquake shock. Sir Gallahad, after his triumph over him following a previous earlier trans-Channel one, was hustled into retirement with a precipitancy that indicated little confidence in his ability to sustain his laurels on the part of those best qualified to judge. Massine and Filibert de Savoie, especially by their performance in the Ascot Gold Cup, seem to be the two best horses in Europe, and there is little between them. Parth may be depended on to give a good account of himself always; he is a runner of class, but nothing like a first-class one. "Verdict and Rose Prince command respect, but neither excites enthusiasm. COLLAPSE OF JUVENILE STARS. Perhaps nothing is so sad in this sad, sad season speaking not of its financial but its sporting status as the almost universal collapse of the two-year-old stars of 1923. Nothing more melancholy than the cases of St. James, Sarazen and Wise Counsellor here at home well could be imagined. At the close of last season it looked as if we possessed in them perhaps the best trio of two-year-olds that ever -went into winter quarters simultaneously in this country. They were the principal subjects of conversation among turfmen from fall till spring and the general public itself was on tip-toe about them. And scarce was spring safely out of winters lap ere they had faded out of the picture like frost before the sun. In England tho case of Mumtaz Mahal is simply pathetic in its utterness of woe. Diophon and Sansovino and Plack have popped up like Punch in the pantomine and then gone to smash as completely as if Jack Ketch himself had nabbed them. Plack pirouettes for a moment and then exit from the spotlight And so on and on interminably. In France, too, as the returns on the classics come to hand, the winner is almost invariably not what 1923 had augured. In Italy the Derby favorite received a fearful drubbing. In Australia similar things are the rule, not the exception. There was never a time in the hitsory of racing as an "organized sport" when the great public was so devoted to and interested in it, so loyal and so liberal in its support and so ready and anxious to become enthusiastic so willing to wax even delirious about it. Never was the "psychological moment" more opportune for the appearance of one of those great racers, those true turf titans, which, from time to time, have done so much for it by stirring the whole world with their performances. "Sister Anne, O Sister Anne. Do you see any one coming." cries the despairing enthusiast, near the last gasp from hope deferred. And Sister Anne, sweeping the horizon with her best binoculars and with her ears open to the radio and its amplifier, replies hopelessly, "Nothing doing." Think of the enormous sums of money that third, fourth and fifth class thoroughbreds are winning right and left and ruminate upon the enormous waste of that money, not from the commercial, but from the sporting standpoint. It makes ones teeth not merely to ache, but to chatter. Will o the wisps and fly-by-nights gathering in the coin by the five figures. Horses that would have had a hard time paying their way as beachcombers in tho days of yore masquerading as classic winners and getting by with it, just because there are no longer any better pebbles on the beach. "Where shall the blame be apportioned? Well, for one thing, let us by no means unload it upon the long-suffering horses themselves. The material exists, just as it always has, for the production of great runners. There need be no doubt entertained on this score. The trouble is in the manner in which it is being employed. In the maladministration I do not hesitate to say that the breeders, the owner, the trainer and the track manager are all to various degrees implicated. Everything, almost everywhere, has been sacrificed or is being, for speed only, and for an equally speedy "turn-over." That is the long and short of it, beyond contradiction. In France only are these objects nut the immediate and entire summer bonum and is it not logical to believe that this is one reason why France this season has the two best thoroughbreds in training, if public form is any criterion? Not without reason have the British been shaking in their boots ever since last summer in fear of the French invasion. Their own breasts gave them warning of what was liable to occur and now it is occuring. THE WRONG VIEWPOINT. Nothing is so cheap, so universal today, as just pure speed, of the so-called "whirlwind" variety. So common is it become that veritably it means nothing. If Short o Breath beats the five furlongs record at Aqueduct, or Sprinting Spindles the six-furlong one at Latonia, or if some marvel of endurance actually shaves an eighth of a second off the mile mark at either track, it will do for a head-line in the next morning stories. But no sane man can for a moment convince himself that it is worth a thought insofar as the future welfare of either racing or the thoroughbred breed is concerned. For it isnt As I have already observed, the great public was never so devoted and so anxious to become enthusiastic over the turf as it is today here in the TJ. S. A. But unless it is given something different from the present diet upon which to feed, it is not going to "keep a-coming" indefinitely. To be promised roasting ears and be regaled with husks will become monotonous, after a while. And more than once the public has shown that it can turn away from something, almost overnight, when it has ceased to attract as once it did. "What the public wants" Is something track managers may think they have gauged to a hair, but track managers are no more infallible than movie managers, and look at the ditch they got themselves into not so long ago by getting tfieir public stall-fed on mediocrity. Big purses and big crowds will not alone keep the turf where it must be kept. We must have great horses and great horse races. These two items have been growing constantly less and less now for seasons, and unles that condition changes, nothwith-standing the apparent immense success that the turf, commercially speaking, for the moment enjoys, retrogression is certain.
