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GREAT EQUIPOISE ABSENTEE Whitneys Champion Is Withdrawn From Saratoga Handicap to Disappointment of Large Crowd. SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y., Aug. 5. There was general and natural disappointment when C. V. Whitneys Equipoise was withdrawn from the Saratoga Handicap. It was agreed that to ask the champion to carry 142 pounds for a gallop of a mile and a quarter was setting him a severe task, but the charm of his name in the published entries brought many to the course who would not otherwise have been there. As a natural result, there was much criticism in the advertising of the champion as a starter only to find him withdrawn. From the time of the issuing of the entries there was always a doubt of his going to the post under such a burden. As a matter of fact T. J. Healey, trainer of the champion, did not want to send him to the post, though Mr. Whitney wanted to have him run. There was a considerable conference in which President Bull of the association took part, and it was finally agreed to be governed by the judgment of trainer Healey. With the exception of the Wilson, in which Equipoise galloped to victory the opening day of the Saratoga Association meeting, each of his engagements has been in handicaps and in each he has carried in excess of scale weight. His first score was in the Philadelphia Handicap at Havre de Grace when, under 128 pounds, he raced a mile and a sixteenth easily in 1:44. Then came the mile of the Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park. He was again in at 128 pounds and won in 1:37. That was followed by the mile and a quarter of the old Suburban Handicap and with his weight raised to 132 pounds, he was winner in the fast time of 2:02. Then the champion was taken to Chicago to win the Arlington Handicap, at a mile and a quarter in which he carried 135 pounds and ran the distance in 2:02. These were his handicaps leading up to the Saratoga Handicap, which with his assignment of 139 pounds, and a three-pound penalty for the Wilson victory brought his weight to 142 pounds. Later Healey said that he found a slight bruise on the heel of the champion after he had a plate removed, and he gave that as a reason for his not being sent to the post.
