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Here and There on the Turf Success in Kentucky. Teaching the Riders. Osmand Galloping Again. Return of Mars. • ♦ The first of the Kentucky meetings of 1927 has been brought to a successful termination and the Kentucky Association, at Lexington, scored a profit over other recent years. Lexington has long been a losing proposition financially, but Sewell Combs and his associates of the Kentucky Association have carried on year after year, pocketing losses and preparing for the next year. Their courage has been rewarded to some degree in the meeting which came to a close Wednesday and it is an excellent sign of the times. Next Saturday the Kentucky racing shifts to the Churchill Downs track of the Kentucky Jockey Club at Louisville and this club, which formerly also controlled the Lexington course, will begin its season with the running of the Clark Handicap. This old fixture is a dash of a mile and a sixteenth, to which 0,000 is added, and this year, as has been the rule of the race, the nominations contain the best horses in the handicap division. Churchill Downs has had a considerable colony of horses galloping over the course practically all winter and early in the spring several Kentucky Derby candidates were shipped in to train for the running of the big feature, so that Louisville has had more "horse" this spring than has been the usual rule. The course has been kept in the best of condition for the benefit of the trainers and long ago all the burnishing of the stands and the grounds had been completed looking to the opening. With Lexington scoring a success at its track, and with the unusual number j of good horses in training at Churchill Downs the prospects for a big Churchill Downs meeting, and a big Kentucky racing campaign could hardly be brighter. Another of those races in which only apprentices who had never ridden a winner were permitted, was staged at the Jamaica course on Wednesday and as has ; happened so often before, the best horse ! was beaten on account of that fact. . Edward Arlingtons Joe Sweep was the l victim on this occasion and he was i beaten by Outstep, a filly ridden by a lad I j who had never ridden in a race before, I but he surely rode with better skill than i ! the lad who rode the Arlington starter. . These races are tremendously unpopular ■ with the racing public and even i when they are conducted with horses of racing education they are bad enough, , but it is doubly bad when such riders i are asked to ride two-year-olds which i have not completely mastered their racing • lessons. Several of the trainers see merit in the maiden jockey race. They contend it makes riders, but, as a matter • of fact, the making of riders is not the purpose of racing. Racing needs riders, , of course, but the time to make them is ; in the forenoon. If they must ride in i races to obtain the necessary education, , by all means have such races, but they Khould be pat on during the forenoon i j ; ! . l i I j I i ! . ■ i , i i • • , ; i , i and no admission should be charged to see these lads loaf around. Such races clutter up a program to no good cause in the afternoon of a racing day when the best horse should have every chance to win. They do not belong on a racing program and there is no chance of them ever becoming popular with the public Just when there was general consternation because of the injury that came to Joseph E. Wideners Osmand there comes evidence that, after all, his j injury is so trifling that it will not be . necessary to halt his training. The J swift-running gelding has been galloping , since he injured a foot by picking up a i nail, and no fever has developed as a result of the injury. This seems to set at rest any fears of his not keeping his engagement in the Kentucky Derby. , It would have been a calamity indeed i if this injury had deprived Osmand of his . opportunity at Churchill Downs on May i 14; for, being a gelding, he is barred [ from many rich races that lead to turf fame. From the beginning, the son of Sweeper — Ormonda has been training brilliantly for the big Kentucky feature I and after that race he will be forced, in most of his engagements, to meet older horses. Osmand is an eligible to the Metropolitan Handicap, in which Mr. Vosburgh handicapped him at 110 pounds, The Satrap being the only three-year-old , asked to take up more weight, and The Satrap is virtually out of the running. The other engagements of Osmand at the Belmont Park meeting are those in which ; he meets older horses and they are the Toboggan, Suburban and the Speed Handicaps. Scott Harlan has indeed begun his season well with the Walter M. Jeffords horses, as the stable already has two , important stakes to its credit. Triton was winner of the Harford Handicap and Mars, by his victory in the Dixie Handicap at Pimlico Monday, scored a double. It was Mars second start of the year and his second victory, so that the son of Man o War has surely been brought back capable of holding a high place in the handicap division. Mars took up 124 pounds in the Dixie Handicap, which is a dash at a mile and three-sixteenths, and he closely followed all the early leaders, to come away like the good and game colt he is when the occasion demands. The Dixie Handicap had a net value of more than 6,000 to the winner and this will mean a six-pounds penalty for Mr. Jeffords good four-year-old in the Metropolitan Handicap, but even with the penalty his weight only reaches 125 pounds — just a pound more than he carried with such success on Monday. And the Metropolitan Handicap is a mile, against the longer route of the Dixie Handicap. Mars has always showed the ability to race a distance, but the mile suits him well, and he must be seriously considered in the Metropolitan Handicap in spite of his penalty. Walter S. Vosburgh handicapped Mars at 119 pounds. w£en the weights were announced inreLiiary and a condition of the handicap requires a twelve-pound penalty for winners of 0,000 after the weight announcement, but the penalty applies only in half the increase in cases of the handicap being as much as 115 pounds. Thus it is that the Dixie Handicap costs Mars only six pounds in additional weight. This will make Mars third weight in the opening handicap of the Westchester Racing Association. Crusader remains at the top, under 129 pounds, and then comes Sarazen with an impost of 126 — -, just a pound more than the Mars weight. Chance Play is under 123, j Macaw 122 and Silver Fox 120. The Jeffords four-year-old has jumped over all of these by his Dixie Handicap vic- tory, but there is a chance that some of these may be penalized before the running of the Metropolitan Handicap, though no penalties can apply to Cru- j sader, for the reason that penalties cease j when the weight becomes 128 pounds. j Mars has done all that has been asked this year and he belongs exactly where he so brilliantly raced himself in the winning of the Dixie Handicap. And thus it is that the sons of Man o War continues to bring undying fame to his sire as a stock horse, just as the sire won his way to the top of the turf while he himself was in training.
