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SAN ANTONIO MARKING TIME Local Race Fans on Qui Vive for Alamo Downs Opening. " Third Meeting In Little More Than One Year at Popular Course Mikel String Arrives. o SAN ANTONIO, Texas, April 23. With only a few days remaining before the opening of Alamo Downs, local racing fans are eagerly awaiting the bugle for the twenty-one days meeting to be inaugurated Thursday. It will be the third meeting in little more than a year to be offered by the association and, if the enthusiasm shown by local horse lovers, who turned out Sunday for "open house," means anything, Alamo Downs is going to experience the best season in the history of this beautiful mile track. President Raymond R. Russell and his associates have had many requests for reserved and box seats for the season, and these choice seats are far beyond the sales of past seasons. This feature alone indicates San Antonio is going to support its race meeting, as well as other cities in Texas, and with good weather prevailing during the season, there is no doubt that racing will make many new friends in this vicinity. More than 300 horses are on the grounds and during the week several hundred more are due to reach here from other points. The stable of J. D. Mikel, which raced at Arlington Downs, unloaded Monday morning, and brings the string of the establishment to thirty-one head to be raced here. It is the largest stable on the grounds, and Includes such well-known racers as Elf Lock, Skinny Carlock, Nellie Bane, March Bane, Just Imagine, Sarazen II., Miss Bane, Daisy Bane, Baptiste, My Bane, Any Price, Playing On, Lugen Luggage, Rizla, Silk Flag, Lerack, Banners Flying, "Wirt G. Bowman. Flabbergast, Polyfon, Portfolio, Blue Foam, Lamp Black, Burning Up, Ervast, Enro, Flag Time, Tocaya, Foolhardy, Gold Step and Ridgeview. Many of the horses race for Mikel, while he is training some for C. Lemons, G. E. Ewins and his son W. A. Mikel. Illinois horsemen will probably have three horses in the Inaugural Handicap, feature race on the opening day card. Should the track be muddy, his chief reliance will be the veteran Gold Step, who has a tendency to win opening day features. The aged horse has won inaugural handicaps at Washington Park, Arlington Park, Hialeah Park and many other leading tracks, his greatest achievements being the Washington Park and Arlington Park inaugurals nearly four years ago, when he defeated the best sprinters of those tracks while racing for Mrs. S. H. Fairbanks, who claimed the horse at Aurora for ,000 two weeks before his smashing triumph in the Washington Inaugural. The clever apprentice, N. Merritt, under contract to J. D. Mikel, arrived from Arlington Downs Monday.
