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Here and There on the Turf Dorvals ,000 Derby. My Colonels Quality. Leopardess and Nicholas. Kentucky Season Outlook. Announcement that the Dorval Jockey Club will have a Derby of ,000 value this year was a pleasant surprise to horsemen. It is known that the club has met with anything but satisfying financial success with its meetings and it is a big thing for Fred Richards and his associates in the Quebec organization to put on such a race. This will be known as the Quebec Derby and it will be the only big three year-old stake race in the province. Racing in Canada has been sorely harrassed for a considerable time by reason of the excessive taxation of the race courses that has almost amounted to confiscation. The promise of such a race is one more evidence of the fine sportsmanship of the men who would make racing endure. Hope has been expressed that some relief will be had from some of the taxation, but in the meantime it is a big thing to know that the Dorval Jockey Club will carry on. Another is the Connaught Park Jockey Club of Ottawa. This is an organization of the best sportsmen in Canada and the racing there has always cost heavily, since taxes were imposed that all but drove the thoroughbred from Canada. It is the Connaught Park Jockey Club, the Ontario Jockey Club and this promise of the Dorval Jockey Club that keeps racing going in Canada in the face of legislation that has been hostile to the deserved success of the turf. When My Colonel was first shown at Miami early in the year, many good judges proclaimed him a great colt and predicted that he would go on to big things as the racing progressed. The racing of the son of Luke McLuke Lucille Morois was cut short in Miami by reason of an injury the colt received in the second of his two winning races. Now he has come back and the manner in which he won over the four and a half furlongs distance at Havre de Grace Saturday just about convinces that he is strictly a good class two-year-cld. It is true that the muddy condition of the track Saturday may have been a help to him, and a severe handicap to some of those that finished back of him, but he won as a good colt should and it is probable that he would have been the winner under any condition of going. When Aucilla, the brother to Leochares, could only run third after his impressive victory at Bowie, it made the race run by My Colonel look that much better. Aucilla was probably the best colt that was raced at Bowie and, even though the going Saturday might have handicapped him. nevertheless the win ner raced so impressively that many who saw the race are ready now to proclaim My Colonel a better colt over any condition of track. Of course, that is something that can only be demonstrated by racing. While on the racing of Saturday there were two performances worth* of more than passing comment. One was the continued ex cellence of Leopardess and the other was the utter failure of Nicholas. Leopardess is a particularly light wuisted filly to earn,- on as t-he has been doing this spring. She came up from New Orleans after a hard campaign there and was the winner of the Inaugural Handicap on the opening day of th" Bowie meeting. She was beaten in the Prince George Handicap, but she had been a.-ked to take up a great lump of weight. She ran I gamely and well under the high impost, although used to make must of the pace. I Saturday Leopardess again made the pace for a mile and a sixteenth to beat as good a horse as Spot Cash and there are few gamer horses than the son of Broomstick and Payment. Leopardess is indeed a sweet filly and she is both fast and game. With Nicholas it was a different story, but T. Murray, who rode him, may have been in a measure to blame. Nicholas, as usual, gave no end of trouble at the barrier, but he was away well and his failure could not be attributed to the start. The condition of the track was just such as that which suited greatly last year. But he did not dash away from his opponents as was his custom last year, when he was away in a good position. The others swarmed about him before he could come clear and it appeared that Murray became timid and took him up rather than ride his mount out of difficulty. That naturally resulted in Nicholas being pinched off and crowded back until he had no chance. Nicholas will surely show to better advantage before the end of the present meeting, but he is one that will have to prove himself all over again. Just one more week and the racing will be back in Kentucky with the meeting at the Lexington course. For a considerable time there have been many horses at the old course fit and ready for the frey and all Kentucky is race hungry for the return of the thoroughbreds. Many of the stables that were campaigned at one or other of the winter tracks were shipped to Lexington at the conclusion of the meetings and, with those that have been in retirement, made a noble array for the opening. All has been in readiness for a considerable time and indications are that the opening of the 1925 racing season in Kentucky will be one of the most notable in the history of the turf. Then at Churchill Downs the candidates for the Kentucky Derby continue to make steady progress towards that great race. The Derby is a month away and much can happen in a month, but thus far about the only prominent candidate for the big race that has gone amiss is Stimulus and he was not a member of the Kentucky contingent, but was doing his training at Belmont Park. And with the opening of the racing in Kentucky the thoroughbred comes back to New York with the two days meeting of the United Hunts Association at Belmont Park. That meeting has grown to great importance in the past few years, but the entertainment that has been furnished for this year by John Mc-Entee Bowman and his associates of that sporting organization, goes far beyond any that was attempted before. With the United Hunts meeting, April 25 and April 27, then there comes the opening at Jamaica and the running of the Paumonok Handicap. It was unavoidable that this opening should conflict with the closing of the meeting at Havre de Grace and the running of the 0,000 Chesapeake Stakes, the big three-year-old race of the meeting. Such conflicts, with so many big races now the rule of the turf, cannot be avoided, but there are horses enough of great speed to make the Paumonok Handicap about the b:st in its history and the Chesapeake Stakes worthy of its best traditions.
