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BELMONT PARK INAUGURAL ♦ ■ Toboggan Handicap Feature of Westchester Opening. , ♦ International Steeplechase Attracts Brilliant Band of Jumpers — Coronation Gets Top Weight. * NEW YORK, N. Y., May 16— With revivals of the International Steeplechase Handicap and the historic Toboggan Handicap as opening day features, the Westchester Racing Association will inaugurate at Belmont Park tomorrow afternoon, a race meeting that promises to eclipse the greatest spring meeting promoted at the finest of American racing plants in twenty-three years. There are 2,500 thoroughbreds of various ages and class ready for the colors at the several Long Island courses. They come to Belmont Park seasoned by racing in Maryland, Aqueduct and Jamaica, and they will race through to June 9 for a matter of 73,000. The International Steeplechase this afternoon will have a gross value of about ,000. It will bring together, for a gallop of two miles over the stiffest course in the country, seven of the best jumpers of the strongest cross-country stables. Mrs. Payne Whitneys Coronation, top weight under 144 pounds ; the Brookmeade Stables Fredden Rock, 140 ; Joseph E. Wide-ners Barleycorn. 137 : Bayard Warrens Canterbury, Thomas Hitchcocks Bangle, and Victor Emanuels Cheramy, 135 each, and Joseph E. Davis Endicott, 132. There will be no scratches unless there is rain and mud, which are not expected, or something happens to the one or more overnight nominations. The new scratch rule, suggested last winter by president Joseph E. Widener of the Westchester Association, becomes operative tomorrow afternoon. This rule deprives owners and trainers of their age-long privilege of scratching horses at will. Hereafter, at Belmont Park, no horse may be withdrawn from any race unless the stewards approve, and the stewards will not approve unless a good reason is offered. Barleycorn and Endicott were winners at Pimlico earlier in the month, Fredden Rock was a contender in several races. Coronation, Canterbury, Bangle and Cheramy, which Continued on eighteenth page. BELMONT PARKJNAUGURAL Continued from first page. have been schooling at Belmont Park, have been jumping well. Their trainors believe them to be in mid-season condition. Fred-den Rock, always a good one over big jumps, won last years International Steeplechase. Prominent among the sprinters in the Toboggan Handicap, a dash of three-quarters over the Widener straightaway, which will gross about 2,000 and pay its winner all of 0,000, is Chance Play, which won last years renewal, under 128 pounds, in 1 :11 flat. Chance Play will have to. carry 130 pounds tomorrow afternoon and he hasnt had a conditioning race. Nevertheless, John I. Smith, who is training him for William Averill Harriman, has him fit enough to win. Perhaps the most formidable of Chance Plays potential opponents is Scapa Flow, which made a brilliant showing at Pimlico in the 5,000 Dixie Handicap. Scapa Flow was not a success last year, but the veteran Scott Harlan has brought him back this spring as good as he was a couple of years ago, when he won a Belmont Park Futurity. Straightaway racing comes as easy to him as it does to Chance Play. Rock ManT a Chesapeake Stakes winner and Kentucky Derby contender at three, comes from Maryland, where he won the Harford Handicap, in which he defeated Scapa Flow. Osmand, which has been working well, was the best of last years three-year-olds up to about a mile and an eighth. Happy Argo was one of the best of the weight-carrying sprinters ; Sweep-ster, another good one ; Twitter, a Spinaway Slakes winner, and Finite, a Babylon Handicap victor. Earlier Toboggan Handicaps have attracted bigger fields, but none that was better matched or promised a keener contest. The program is attractive. Eight good platers. Mosque, Sun Forward, Architect, and Fair Man among them, have been named for the first race, a dash of a mile and a sixteenth. The third, a sprint of four and a half furlongs on the straightaway, has drawn Dunkirk, one of the juvenile heroes of the Pimlico meeting, along with seven or eight other candidates for the 5,000 Keone Memorial, which will be onQ of the features of Saturdays card. In the fifth the three-year-olds Algernon and Flyacross, candidates for the 5,000 Withers Stakes renewal set for Saturday, will meet Copiapo. Sanford, Recreation, Oiseau dOr and Sankari, and a couple of others over one mile. The last will bring fourteen good two-year-old fillies together. Friday will be marked by the inaugural of the Debut Stakes, the Westchester Associations new dash of seven-eighths, for three-year-ol Is that have never started. The Maturity Stakes, a gallop of one mile and a quarter, for four-year-olds exclusively, and another new race, will be run next Wednesday. Two-year-old features that will have renewals late;- on are the 5,000 National Stallion Stakes, the ,000 Fashion Stakes, and the 5,000 Juvenile Stakes. Revivals of the Coaching Club American Oaks Stakes, a 0,000 race of a mile and three-eighths, for three-year-old fillies, and the 5,000 Belmont Stakes, a gallop of one mile and a half, for colts and fillies, and the Suburban Handicap, a gallop of a mile and a quarter, for three-year-olds and over, will feature the sport of the last two weeks.
