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DERBY TRAINING IS HALTED Weather Retards Preparations at Louisville and Other Sections of the Blue Grass State. LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 12. Unless the weather man changes his program, at least to such an extent that training conditions here and down through the Blue Grass belt will be improved, Kentucky and the West may have to take chances in the sixty-first Kentucky Derby to be run at local Churchill Downs Saturday, May 4, with horses in not near the physical trim their trainers would prefer to have them. It has been years since the weather behaved in this section and at this time of year as it has this spring. There appears to be no end to the rain. Scarcely a day in three weeks has passed without some moisture and not infrequently, a near-tor-riential downpour, tumbling from the gray heavens. Some of the older horsemen who have been coming to Churchill Downs for many years say its the wettest spring since 1920 and 1919, the Paul Jone3 and Sir Barton years. As a consequence such of the ranking candidates as Chance Sun, Boxthorn, Big Gawk, Chanceview, Weston, Nellie Flag, Calumet Dick, Finance, St. Bernard, Shoeless Joe and other less prominent hopefuls quartered here at Lexington and at private farms and which did not race during the winter will not be at their best unless there is more than an average amount of dry weather between now and Derby Day. Trainers of Derby horses have their charges ready for the most important part of their Derby training, the "speed and wind" tests, but conditions have been so treacherous that not one of them has chanced "setting down" his candidate or candidates during the long period of mud and rain. , When the weather does change and track conditions become favorable horsemen look for a quickening of training paces and "rushing" of candidates, the equal of which has not been seen in this section in many years.
