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HAWTHORNE GOLD CUP Conditions for 5,000 Event Are Changed to Handicap. Four Other Hawthorne Stakes Illinois Owners Handicap Retained Purses Total ?8,000 Daily. Charles Krutckoff, president of the Chicago Business Mens Racing Association, has released the stake program and purse distribution for the Hawthorne meeting which opens on Labor Day, Monday, September 6, and closes on Saturday, October 2, a period of twenty-four racing days. The piece de resistance will be the Hawthorne Gold Cup, the conditions of which, however, have been changed to meet the growing competition from the East and other parts of the Middle West. The added money will be 5,000, but instead of a weight-for-age race, the feature will be a handicap with a maximum weight of 128 pounds and a minimum of 108 pounds. Under this plan it is believed that not only a larger field of horses will be secured but also that the range of weights will induce people with topnotch horses to enter and run in the stake, knowing that they will not be asked to give some ordinary horse too much weight concession. Under present racing conditions, it is probable that by the fall some horse will be outstanding in American racing and a weight-for-age race might develop into a practical walk-over as happened when Discovery won the stake two years ago, at which time the association suffered an actual loss in the mutuel handle on the race through a minus pool. POPULAR ILLINOIS RACE. As in former years, the Illinois Owners Handicap, for horses owned by bona-fide residents of the state, will be run as one of the features of the meeting. The date set for it is September 25, and the distance is one and one-sixteenth miles. The full list of stakes for the meeting follows: September 6 Labor Day Handicap; six furlongs........? 3,000 Added September 11 Hawthorne Gold Cup; one and one-quarter miles 15,000 Added September 18 Hawthorne Juvenile Handicap; six and one-half furlongs 5,000 Added September 25 Illinois Owners Handicap; one and one-sixteenth miles 5,000 Added October 2 Hawthorne Handicap; one and one-sixteenth miles 5,000 Added The purse distribution will be a most attractive one. The management will offer a minimum of ,000 in purses on days in which no stake is run. The executive committee, composed of president Krutckoff, chairman of the board Charles W. Bidwill, and Joseph A. Murphy, vice-president, spent Friday at the track going over the needed improvements for the season with Ben Miller, the superintendent. One of the most important improvements determined on was the increase of stall room by building an enclosed shed row connecting up the barns at the east and west end of the stable yard with the south end of the property, thus making an enclosed stable yard where will be installed walks for horses and other facilities for the owners and trainers.
