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CHICAGO OPENING NEAR ♦ Stage Set for Seasons Inaugural at Aurora Course. ■ — ■ All Remodeling Work Complete, Officials on Grounds and Plenty of Horses Available for Sport. AURORA, 111., April 29.— The stage is set today for a week-end that will be the most important of the year for Chicago followers of thoroughbred racing. The long Chicago season opens at Aurora on Friday with the fourteenth running of the Fox Valley Inaugural Handicap, in which a limit field of good sprinters will come together over six furlongs; on Saturday such of the Chicago racing public as is not in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby, is expected to be on hand at Aurora to hear the famous stake broadcast over the loudspeaker system as an attraction added to the eight races that will be run over the Fox Valley track. Aurora now needs nothing but good weather to start its most successful spring meeting Friday. All remodeling has been completed, all of the racing officials are on the grounds, the track crew has worked over the course after the recent showers until it is now in its best condition, and the 00,000 in purses that will be given away at the meeting, is in the strong-box awaiting claim by the owners of the horses that will win during the nineteen-day term of sport that leads up to the 2,000 added Illinois Derby on May 22. LATEST TEXAS ARRIVALS. The last of the horses that will race at Aurora arrived late yesterday from Arlington Downs in Texas. There were two cars containing the strings of Mrs. A. M. Creech and C. E. Davison. Nine cars arrived from Texas late Monday to fill every available stall at the race course. The completion of work by officials will serve as a signal to Chicago horse followers to begin their own preparations to make the meeting a financial success personally. From now until the first field parades to the post Friday the thousands who have been following the horses by remote control since last October will be poring over the form charts and workout sheets and refreshing their memories upon the peculiarities of the Aurora track. One angle that all veterans recall is never to wager on a horse at Aurora that is not a good stretch-runner. Aside, possibily, from Belmont Park, Aurora has the longest stretch in America, and horses that cannot stand off a challenge through the 1450-foot straightaway win few races there. JOCKEY STARS DEVELOPED. Another is that jockeys who have previously done little riding must be watched closely at the Fox Valley track, for every year there has been at least one unknown apprentice — such as Paul Keester or Dan Erammer— who has started on his way to fame there. With such leading riders as Charley Parke, Frank Chojnacki, Johnny Longden and Cornelio Mojena checked in, the newcomers may have a harder time of it at Aurora than in previous seasons. The effect that the new Aurora track will have upon horses that previously favored the old racing surface is being awaited with great interest by race followers. Racers that favored a hard track have always been Aurora favorites and have won many races, but the new cushion that has been added to the track will take away much of their advantage. Favorites will get a heavy play at Aurora, of course, for over a period of years Aurora outranks other Chicago tracks in percentage of winning public choices.
