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Here and There on the Turf Rockinghanr Caters to Public Officiating Must Please Workman New Deal at Odds Cavanagh Makes Bad Euling Rockingham Park opened its thirtyone day meeting Saturday with a 10000 feature the Granite State Handicap The event had been doubled in value to attract Equipoise and then for some reason or other never adequately explained the champion was un ¬ able to fill the engagement Lou Smith however left the event at its increased valu ¬ ation which wont hurt his standing any With either horsemen or public C V Whit ¬ ney and Thomas J Healey owner and trainer of Equipoise naturally felt bad about with ¬ drawing the star and they did the next best thing in sending Roustabout to the New Hampshire course to appear in the Granite State StateIf If the people from which Rockingham attracts its patronage are as horseminded as they were a year ago the meeting should be just as successful if not more so than the two sessions offered in 1933 Learning that the people of Greater Boston wanted racing of the right kind Smith and his asso ¬ ciates are trying to give it to them They Jiave improved the plant generally built more stables installed the allelectric total ¬ izator and enlarged the betting ring so as to avoid the annoying delays prevalent on Saturdays last year Then to attract the right kind of horses a long list of stakes was arranged and the value of purses gen ¬ erally was improved improvedRockingham Rockingham only has to keep in the good graces of the public to continue its success unless of course Massachusetts passes a racing bill and a track is constructed closer to Boston Good officiating will do as much as anything to maintain the confidence of the public so it is to be hoped that the Rockingham stewards are more vigilant than they were last fall The writer visited the New Hampshire course for three days last year and saw at least one race that could have been looked into without insulting cer ¬ tain owners and trainers With the tote insuring the public of a square deal in the mutuels good officiating will make the cus ¬ tomers feel that the racing is all right too Sonny Workman and the New Deal offi ¬ ciating on the metropolitan circuit dont seem to be getting along very well For the second time within a month his mount has been disqualified after finishing first and he has suffered a suspension The surpris ¬ ing part of the second ban is that it is only for five days whereas the first covered three weeks Usually a second offense calls for greater punishment but perhaps thestew Coniinued on twentyeightJi page HERE AND THERE ON THE TURF Continued from second page ards took cognizance of the fact that he was riding a twoyearold and youngsters at times do things beyond their riders con ¬ trol What is happy about the whole case unfortunate as it is to Workman and to those persons who wagered on his mount is that New York has someone in the stew ¬ ards stand who gets the correct usage out of a pair of binoculars binocularsWhoever Whoever has charge of naming the super ¬ visor of the betting ring at New York tracks had better give serious thought to the qualifications of their appointee The supervisor is John Cavanagh a man of long experience which however doesnt seem to have helped him His order that all money bet on Dundalk be refunded is one contrary to the rules of racing which state that a horse is a starter when he has left the paddock Dundalk ran away while on the race track and to all intents and purposes he was a starter in the race Of course very little damage was done as Dundalk was a 30 to 1 shot but if Cavanagh will make such a ruling on a long shot hell do it on an evenmoney horse It is not often that we uphold the bookmakers but in this particu ¬ lar case they are being discriminated against Today Arlington Park will offer the first of its races over the turf The contest will be over the mile and a sixteenth dis ¬ tance so it will be started in front of the stand as the course is about a mile around A thick sod has been developed and the horses should run over it as well as they do in England where all races are over the turf With a 1000 purse for the first turf race a large field may be expected and if the public shows its approval by the man ¬ ner in which it supports the events they will become a daily feature Hardly more than one race a day may be held over the turf because it is easily cut up by the sharp racing plates of the horses
