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FAVORS STARTING BARRIER Judge Joseph A. Murphy Gives Views on Starting Methods. Big Improvement Over Old Style Standing-Starts Not Injurious to Horses-Two-Year-Old Problem. ARLINGTON, Texas,-April 21. Joseph A. Murphy, director of racing of the Texas Jockey Club, was in a reminiscent mood when the representative of Daily Racing Form dropped into his cozy office at Arlington Downs a few days ago. "With a retrospective glance back over the forty years of my active connection as an official with the American turf," he said, "I have seen many come and go and I have seen many innovations, most of which. I believe are for the betterment of the turf. I do not belong to the class which rolls its eyes and speaks of the good old days, because 1 believe that the American turf of today is a cleaner, healthier and more fascinating institution than ever in its history. "The greatest improvement in racing, in my judgment, has been the starting, and I have read with considerable interest the attempt of some to disturb what I believe is the most efficient system we have ever had in this country. "When I first started in racing we had no barrier of any kind and the starter used a drum which he tapped to designate that a start had been made. Horses were taken back 100 yards or more from the starting post and came galloping to the starter. If they were in close alignment he hit the drum. If not they were called back for another attempt. It was a crude, unwieldy and generally "unsatisfactory system of sending horses away. RECALLING 1893 AMERICAN DERBY. "There are many who still remember the American Derby of 1893 at Chicago, which I reported for the Chicago Tribune, in which Charles Pettengill, at that time the premier starter of America, kept a high-class field of three-year-olds at the post one hour and forty minutes. It was conservatively estimated that these horses, all with their weight up, had run at least two miles before the actual start for the gruelling mile and a half was made. Chorister bowed in the race and several of the starters were practically ruined for racing purposes. "There is a record greater than this, when Mr. Wheatley stayed over two hours at the post in, if my memory serves me correctly, the Spinaway Stakes at Saratoga, for two-year-olds. Ed Hopper, the former efficient racing secretary at Latonia, told me once that John Funk, a starter of more or less ability, once made a start in which he hit the drum for each horse that went by him. While this was probably highly colored, it at least demonstrates the crudeness of the system of early starting. It is also related that Colonel Montgomery, at Memphis, became so exasperated with the riders in a race that he laid the drum down and told the boys that he was going over to the clubhouse and take a drink and that when he returned if they were ready for a start he would send them off. He kept his word and finally secured a break. When one picks up a Racing Form these days and sees that many days the average time at the post is less than a minute for the eight races, he wonders why anyone would take exception to the present system. SAW FIRST BARRIER TRIED OUT. "I was in the stand at Ingleside, in California, when the first barrier was ever used in a start. It was known as the Gray Gate and was brought from Australia by an expatriated Australian named Lopez who at that time owned a good horse, Articulate. It was a crude instrument Two stationary posts on each side of the track were set into the ground and the barrier ran up these posts on a cable, the impetus being secured from long rubber strips which were tied to the track fence. The release was through a lock and the starter effected this with a pump-handle effect that was slow and cumbersome. "I haye jiever forgotten the start. The race was a. mile and a sixteenth hurdle race, started directly in front of the stand and Mr. Lopez, with a pipe in his mouth, stepped up into the starters box and the field raised at the release of the barrier like one horse. From that time On, there was a steady improvement in starting devices until we have the present stall gates which, in my opinion, are the last word in starting. "In the experimental years, I recall many amusing incidents. When I was in the stand at Roby, Indiana, a good many years ago, George V. Hankins, who built the Harlem track, and who was at that time the head of the Chicago Stable, one of the most pretentious racing establishments in the Middle West at the time, came to me and told me that he had solved the problem of starting. He said that he would hire a number of competent grooms or guineas as they were I known at that time, and that he would place a guinea at each horse and lead the .field up to a line across the track when Dick Dwyer, who was doing the starting at the time, would give the word. A SYSTEM THAT DIDNT WORK. "I told him that while it looked all right in theory, it might not work out so well in practice but he laughed at me so I ".told him to go ahead and give it a trial. I shall never, forget the start. The horses were led up all right to the starting point and when Dwyer yelled come oh they broke in fan-like form in every direction and there were guineas spread all over the race track. Several of them were injured and George paid them all off and agreed that the system certainly heeded some improvement. "I have noticed also, with considerable interest, the discussion of the question of whether standing starts are injurious to horses. I cannot believe there is any merit in this claim and if there is, it certainly does not carry with it the same menace to horses that the kicking, crowding and jostling inevitably attendant upon the walk-up start does. "In the Hawthorne Handicap a few years ago, I saw Misstep ,and Lady Broadstep, two pf the outstanding handicap horses of the West at the time, stand and kick it out. Misstep was never the same horse afterwards. I saw Naishapur, intended for a great race horse, kicked at the post in the the American Derby by Paul Bunyan, and finish in the race with the blood running in a stream from his side. He has never been any account since. I might go on and relate hundreds of incidents of the same character which have happened in racing in the past. Even before the stall gates, the so-called walk-up start was not really such because the starters who used it most would take a standing start if at the first attempt the horses did not come to the barrier in proper alignment. SPEAKING FROM LONG EXPERIENCE. "When I was a younger man, I held every short distance amateur running championship in the West from 100 yards to a quarter of a mile and finished second, in the National Amateur Championship in 1887 at the Manhattan Grounds on Eighth Avenue in New York, in the 100 and 220 yards. We used at that time, and it has always been used since, a standing start, and I do not recall that there was any particular strain on any of our tendons. The same principle must prevail with horses. "My personal judgment is that if there is a. prevalent unsoundness in our hors.es it comes from three fundamental causes, viz.: The fact that many of our breed have been produced from stallions and mares whose constitutions have been weakened by excessive use of narcotic stimulants, stall-fed yearlings and excessive early two-year-old racing. Happily, the first of these causes is in process of complete elimination, and I look in the next few years, as a consequence, to see a decided improvement in the breed of American horses. We shall probably have less impotent sires and fewer anemic produce under the new order of things. "Breeders are not to blame for the stall feeding of yearlings because they find that if they are to have a proper return in the sale of their produce they must send fat, sleek-looking youngsters to the sales market in Saratoga and other places. These yearlings, once purchased, are taken hog-fat to the training farms for breaking. Before they I are much more than bridle-wise they are asked to show a trainer whether they have any speed or not and are then laid away for the winter, particularly if they have shown any promise, if we happen to have a late spring they are picked up almost before the snow is off the ground, given a hurried preparation for the early valuable stakes, and. some of .them are .sent, to the post with the inside fat scarcely absorbed. It is little wonder that we have unsound horses. MAKE JULY JUVENILE STAKES, TIME. "If we could have no two-year-old stakes until the first of July, so that trainers could take their time in developing what would seem to be the best in their stable I feel sure that we would not be looking around for something with even a semblance of class in the four-year-did and up division. "I have not the slightest conception that any recommendation that I would make in this direction would bear any fruit, but we can at least place the blame, if we can call it blame, where it really belongs. Many people might think that because I introduced the Bahr gate at Hawthorne and purchased it for the Chicago Business Mens Racing Association, and, as a matter of fact, still retain a small interest in the corporation which controls it, that my judgment might be biased, but I would still have the same thoughts and ideas in respect to the subject of starting if I did not hold this close affiliation with the starting device. "I think one of the most, pleasing and instructive innovations in racing is the loud speaker. Very few people carry field glasses-to a race track, and the "broadcast not only permits the association to reach its public with every change of equipment, weights, scratches, etc., but the description of the race, particularly when given by a colorful announcer of the Clem McCarthy type, is a very entertaining feature of the racing and gives it a zest which could not be obtained in any other way. "As to our race-riding and our horses, I have always believed that class is something which asserts itself, irrespective of the age and time in which it thrives. I have always believed that Tod Sloan was the most finished rider who ever participated in American racing, and I shall always believe also that Man o War was our greatest horse, but I also believe that we have more good horses and more good race riders now participating in racing than we have ever had in the history of the American turf. "While racing is riding high in popular esteem, it would be well to sound a note of warning based oh some rather sad experiences in the past. Excessive racing killed the sport in Missouri and despite many intelligent and determined attempts to revive it there, those who have, tried it have never been successful. Excessive racing wrecked the .sport in California when Tom Williams persisted in racing 150 days at a time when San Francisco was struggling to its feet after the terrible earthquake and fire of some years ago, and the commissions and governing bodies in various states might remember with profit that the overdoing of any racing in communities which . qan ill-afford it, inevitably brings disaster."
