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GEO. GABLE WINS DECISIVELY -T- Outruns Red Flyer and Opera Bouffe at Oaklawn Park. Sam Korex Purse Over Short Course Heads Spa Card Virnock Takes Opening Contest. HOT SPRINGS, Ark., April 3. -The Sam Rorex Purse, an allowance affair over the short Oaklawn course, topped todays program at Oaklawn Park, and in it Joe Shakespeares Geo. Gable raced to a more or less decisive victory. Red Flyer was second and Opera Bouffe, the betting choice, third to complete the distance, which the winner ran in 1:09 over a fast track. Geo. Gable, with J. Tinker in the saddle, took command early and never was headed, although Tinker drove him energetically through the final eighth to forestall any tendency the colt might show to quit. His margin at the finish was a length and a half. Opera Bouffe was closest to the pace for a quarter and then gave way to Red Flyer and lost second place by a half length, although she was well in front of Just Frank at the end. The latter met interference leaving the back stretch and was eliminated. Gold Ti and Sky Warrior completed the field. They are all three-year-olds. Todays program was a good one and helped to attract the largest crowd of the week, but the followers of the sport were looking forward to tomorrows final program, which will be featured by the Au Re-voir Handicap. This race, a run of a mile and a sixteenth, drew eleven nominees overnight, three-year-olds and over. Among those scheduled to match strides in this attractive race are Prince Torch, Getalong, Repaid, My Blaze, Sunport, Aunt Myrtle, Pat C. and Grand Rock. Getalong must carry top weight, 116 pounds; Prince Torch, 114, and Grand Rock, 113. As usual, Saturdays card will include eight races and all of them should prove interesting contests. The card today was given over mostly to sprinters. The opening event was a dash for two-year-olds over four furlongs and then followed four races over the Oaklawn course. The final two races were route affairs, the sixth at a mile and seventy yards and the final at a mile and a quarter. The weather was fair and the track fast. Rough riding marred the first race and caused the downfall of the highly regarded Just Ahead, with Fair Gem, another starter, also being eliminated. Equality, which broke in stride, caused the jam when she was brought over sharply to the rail as they came to the elbow out of the back stretch. With Just Ahead out of the way, the race simmered down to a two-hbrse affair between Virnock and Col. Julian, which came to the end noses apart in the order named. The shift in riders on Honey All worked to a decided advantage with the result that the son of All Over and Heather Honey won his first race of the year when he turned back a band of the inferior type of sprinters that visited the post for the second race. This was a test over the Oaklawn course, and the winner was compelled to come from a good distance back to achieve his conquest. Blind Star, under a hustling ride by apprentice Dennis Barnett, raced to second place, while third went to Happy Find. Semester and Parade Rest of which much was expected, failed to share in the purse. The third, another over the Oaklawn course, also produced a rousing finish, with Keyed Up, Grandmas Boy, Rapparee and Duckie Rose racing past the finish in that order with two lengths separating all of them. Keyed Up, which carries the colors of Mrs. L. H. Nimkoff , led from shortly after the start, but he had to be hard ridden through the stretch to suppress the determined bid of Grandmas Boy. Royal Ballad was an odds-on favorite, but was slow to get going, although she ran a good race.
