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DOWNS INAUGURAL SATURDAY Famous Kentucky Derby Meeting Opening This Week-End. Expert Observers Predicting Twelve or Fourteen Starters in Big Race See Attendance Record. LOUISVILLE, Ky., April 23. Famed primarily as the home of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs, one of the countrys foremost racing plants, launches another spring meeting here next Saturday with every prospect that it will prove one of the most attractive from a racing standpoint and also one of the most successful in its long, colorful history. The meeting will embrace twenty-two days, exclusive of Mondays, except Decoration Day, when the final program will be offered. Because of the great importance of the Kentucky Derby, the sixty-fourth running of which will take place on Saturday, May 7, other of the stakes are somewhat obscured, but nonetheless the features surrounding the classic event will be comparable to the finest racing has to offer. Among them will be found two fixtures as old as the Derby. They are the Clark Handicap, to be run on the first .day of the season, and the Kentucky Oaks, which is down for decision on the final Saturday, May 28. NEW ATTRACTIONS. New attractions are the Derby Trial Stakes, the Louisville Handicap and the Churchill Downs Handicap, while the Debutante Stakes, for several years combined with the Bashford Manor, is to be revived in its original form, as a prize exclusively for juvenile fillies. Another former headliner back on the Downs program is the Kentucky Handicap, while the Bashford Manor, up for its thirty-seventh running, rounds out the program of nine added money events. While the record field of twenty-two for the Derby, set in 1928, is in no danger of being equalled or surpassed, the classic this year is likely to produce one of the most stirring races in all the long record of this premier prize of the American turf. At this time it appears that the field will include such outstanding members of the three-year-old division as Stagehand, Fighting Fox, Nedayr, Bull Lea, Dauber, Lawrin, Mountain Ridge, The Chief, Menow, Redbreast, Sun Egret, Co-Sport, Cant Wait, Gov. Chandler and Bourbon King, while there also may be a starter or two from a group which includes Gangplank, Dickerville, Stands Alone, Kings Heir, Dah He and several others. RACE OPEN. It was believed that the Derby field would be more or less established by the time the meeting opens and observers are forecasting a starting array of about twelve or fourteen. Also it is generally believed that the race is a very open one and this, despite the exploits, of the current favorite, Stagehand, star of! the winter season. Continuing to expand as one of the countrys outstanding sports institutions, thb Derby this year may break its own attendance record. Annually, for many years, it has been presented before racings biggest crowds and this spring may find it attracting close to 100,000 persons to the beautiful grounds where it is run. All signs indicating a large increase over the biggest previous Derby gathering, Col. M. J. Winn, president of he track, has made provisions to take care of the anticipated increase and then some. Besides all the star three-year-olds coming to fight it out in the Derby, Churchill" Downs patrons will see many of the nations ranking handicap horses as well as the best three-year-old fillies, whieh will have the Oaks to themselves, and, of course, a new crop of juveniles. The principal attractions fashioned for the handicap performers are the Clark, the Louisville, the Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Handicaps, and, as they will be decided at distances from seven furlongs to a mile and an eighth, they will offer variety and quality to the seasons sport. FORMIDABLE STABLES. Almost without exception, all of the most fashionable and formidable western stables, together with a number of eastern establishments, will take part in the racing. Names from the Elue Book of the turf to appear on the Downs program, include Mrs. Payne Whitney, Joseph E. Widener, Johnson N Camden, Charles T. Fisher, Emerson F. Woodward, William Woodward, Warren Wright, Charles B. Shaffer, William duPont Jr.; Mrs. Frank J. Navin, Arthur B. Hancock, Herbert M. Woolf, Mrs. Ethel V. Mars, William E. Smith, James W. Parrish, Thomas Piatt, D. and B. Midkiff, Patrick A. Nash, Richard J. Nash, H. P. Headley, M. L. Eme-rich, Anthony Pelleteri, C. Leroy King, J. Graham Brown, R. Wallace Mcllvain, A. C. Ernst, Willis Sharpe Kilmer, A. C. Compton, Maxwell Howard, Myron Selznick, Theodore E. Mueller, Bert Friend, Morris Vehon, Howard Oots, Brownell. Combs, Baylor Hickman, Ike J. Collins, James C. Stone, C. C. Van Meter, A. B. Letellier, Roy Carruthers and many others.
