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OPENING AT NEW YORK NEAR Jamaica to Inaugurate Metropolitan Racing Season Next Saturday. Mild Winter Important Factor in Advanced Condition of Horses Officials Predict Successful Meeting. NEW YORK, N. Y., April 8. The official opening of the 1939 racing season, under the jurisdiction and auspices of the New York State Racing Commission and The Jockey Club, is scheduled for the coming Saturday at the Metropolitan Jockey Clubs popular Jamaica course. Not in many years has the racing season hereabouts started under more favorable conditions. The mild winter has been an important factor in getting the horses and course in good shape for the start of the opening session. For some time past many thoroughbreds have been breezing along briskly at the various training quarters. Jamaicas spring meeting comprises twenty-two days of racing, extending from Saturday, April 15, through Wednesday, May 10, and includes four Saturdays. Dr. Edward P. Kilroe, president of the Metropolitan Jockey Club, has had a staff of men putting the course in perfect shape for the opening of the meeting. He is sanguine of a highly successful meeting from the standpoint of attendance as well as sport. DIVERSIFIED PROGRAM. For the opening day, racing secretary John B. Campbell has arranged a special program of diversified events, the outstanding feature of which will be, as usual, the time-honored Paumonok Handicap, with ,500 added, for three-year-olds and upward over the six furlongs course. Among the thirty-two nominated are Fighting Fox, Johnstown, Co-Pilot, Now Then, Clodion, Thanksgiving, The Chief, Pagliacci, Airflame, Stormscud, Flying Scot and Opera Hat. The overnight titled events will comprise jthe Crocus, for two-year-old maiden fillies; I the Croquette, for three-year-old maiden fil-I lies; the Restigouche, for three-year-olds; : the Dunboyne, at a mile and a sixteenth, for i four-year-olds and upward, and a claiming race, at the same distance, for four-year-olds and upward. Assistant secretary Frank J. Reilly reports an increasing demand for private boxes for the season. He has arranged for ample j transportation facilities for the crowd ex-i pected to see the special opening day at-j tractions. The Long Island Railroad will j dispatch special trains from Pennsylvania Station, 33rd Street, and 7th Avenue, beginning at 12:20 p. m., followed at short inter-I vals up to 1:55 p. m., and from Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, from 12:40 to 1:55 p. m.
