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♦ , $ Here and There on the Turf Arlingtons Tough Luck. Many Saturday Stakes. Vito and Victorian Out. CockriLVs Bad Race. Reason for Investigation. «, • The Arlington Park meeting ends today. Few, if any, race tracks in this country ever met with such a tough break in weather as has been encountered by the newest of Chicagos racing grounds. When the dates for the Chicago tracks were announced early in the spring, Arlington Park was considered to have been particularly favored by being granted twenty-four racing days in June. Time was when June days were ideal racing days here in Chicago, in fact, generally throughout the country. Apparently the weather man has been endeavoring to keep apace with the dizzy whirl of changing modern times and has turned the seasons topsy-turvy, with the result that the showers that once were proverbial in April now infringe on June sunshine. So, instead of Arlington Park basking in the bright rays of a temperate June sun, for the most part was obscured by low hanging clouds and deluged by rains of great frequence and volume that racing, on sixteen of the twenty-four days of the meeting, were conducted over a slow, muddy or heavy track. In truth, conditions were so bad during the final week of the meeting that the officials ; found great difficulty in filling the programs. It was only natural that the ■ racing should suffer, form is never as well observed in the mud as on a fast track, and, consequently, the percentage of winning favorites was considerably below normal. Despite the unpropiticus 1 conditions, however, the popularity of : Arlington Park was strikingly illustrated on several occasions, particularly so on 1 American Derby day, wnen a Towd estimated as high at 55,000 witnessed a great : race between some of the best three-year-olds of the year. It is to be hoped that the weather man will be more gracious to Arlington Park during the second meeting, which follows Hawthorne. Another big Saturday of racing is the i promise for this afternoon. At Aqueduct : the Queens County Jockey Club will offer • the Tremont Stakes, a three-quarters i dash for two-year-olds, to which ,000 I is added, and the Dwyer Stakes, at a mile l and a half, with 0,000 added, for the I three-year-olds. The meeting aL Arlington ■ Park will come to a conclusion i with the running of the American National - Turf and Field Handicap, at a i mile and an eighth, with 5,000 added; while at Latonia the big offering is the I Cincinnati Trophy, at three-quarters, , with ,000 added, for the two-year-olds. . In value, the greatest of all these races 3 Is the Dwyer Stakes. The interest is s not alone in its value, but in its racing r, importance, coming as it does after the I running of so many of the big three-year-old - stake races. It is a race in l which there are penalties and allowances, 60 that the three-year-olds that failed in i other of the greater stake races will have s a weight advantage, while the winners i ; ■ 1 : 1 : i : • i I l I ■ i - i I , . 3 s r, I - l i s i will be correspondingly penalized. This and the route makes it or especial lppcal. And in addition to these features a special program has been prepared for the Fairmount Park racing at Collinsville, and new meetings begin at Kenilwo:th Park, Windsor, and at Lagoon Park in Utah. Thus it will be seen that the Saturdays continue to be big afternoons at all the racing centers on the continent. Then Monday will bring the opening of the Lincoln Fields meeting, while New York will have a change of scene from Aqueduct to James Butlers Yonkers course of the Empire City Racing Association next Thursday. It is a calamity that Victorian will be an absentee from the Dwyer Stakes, for ever since the running of the Belmont Stakes, when Vito was the winner and Victorian soundly beaten, there have been those who contended that Vito would defeat the Whitney colt again in the Dwyer Stakes. Until Friday it was confidently expected that these colts would make the Dwyer Stakes a great renewal of a great stake, and it was doubly disappointing that Victorian should go amiss almost on the eve of the running of the race. It is through Negofol that A. H. Cos-dens Vito can lay claim to ability as a stayer, for there never was a stallion of stouter blood lines brought to this country. Unfortunately, this great stallion died last year, but he has left his impress on the bloodstock of this country and has done great good for the breeding industry. Himself winner of the Prix du Jockey Club French Derby, his best son in this country was Hourless, which raced so brilliantly for the late August Belmont, But in France, the land of his birth, he sired The Chad, also winner of the Prix du Jockey Club; Forseti, winner of the Cesarewitch; Lustucru, Fofolle, Juveigneur, Flechois, and, in this country, Espino proved his staying qualities, and there are many other sterling racing performers on both sides of the Atlantic. Childwick, the sire of Negofol, was one of the best of his day and another of his famous sons was Dean Swift. Childwick was a son of St. Simon and Plaisanterie. Then through this same Plaisanterie there comes the relationship to Tracery, the bsst stayer of his day in England, and bred by August Belmont. Tracery was a son of Rock Sand and Topiary, a daughter of Plaisanterie. These are blood reasons to expect that Vito has a better right to stay all afternoon than possibly any of the present crop of three-year-olds. There are later chances for a meeting between Vito and Victorian and it is hoped and expected that the present lameness of the two will not prevent their being made ready for the August racing at Saratoga Springs if they are not brought together sooner at the Em- pire City Association meeting. Willie McCabe did not make an auspi-■ cious entry to racing when Cockrill and Grey Chief raced under his Irish colors af Aqueduct on Thursday. The two horses that bore his colors raced in a manner to be at least discouraging. As far as Cockrill is concerned, it is hard to find a suitable excuse for the showing of the son of Sand Mole. It was on June 20 that this gelding made a show of his opponents over the same distance, a mile and a sixteenth, that he was beaten on Thursday. On that occasion he took up 113 pounds and, over a track that was not fast, he gal- loped home to win by eight lengths from Buntaris, Bright Steel, Gay Lothario, Ncgopoli, King Jimmy, Blue Diamond and War Lord. Thursday, with 117 pounds up, over the same distance, he was beaten fourteen lengths, those finishing in front of him being Gracious Gift, Verdi, Grand Bey, Easy Money, Golden Volt and Reporter. In fact, the only horse that finished back of him was Dry Toast. Cockrill had gone into another stable and, of course, that will be an alibi for him, but a plater that has shown as much as the son of Sand Mole on various occasions had no business in going back as-he did between those two races. When he galloped home in front he raced for J. P. Smith, while W. A. Crawford sad- died him for his inferior race, If this form of Thursday can be satis-, factorily explained to the stewards, then Willie McCabe is surely entitled to no end of sympathy if he paid as much as 000 for Cockrill— that is the valuation that was placed on him for his race of Thursday. For the good of racing this is a performance that should be explained. The reversal of form was just as pronounced as that shown by Ceylon Prince, but Ceylon Prince improved, while Cockrill went back. Should Cockrill come back to the form he showed before he went to the McCabe stable, possibly there will be an investigation, but sudden improvement is no more reprehensible than a sudden loss of all form. Schreiner rode Cockrill in his winning race and O. Hampton had the mount when he ran so badly on Thursday. Schreiner is a much more skillful rider than Hampton, but there is not enough difference to account for the two races. Some one other than the horse seems to have been to blame for the change in form and that should be sought out by the stewards and a fitting punishment inflicted.
