view raw text
PAWTUCKET INAUGURAL Narragansett Parks Sixth Spring Meeting Begins Today. Seven Hundred and Five Horses on Hand Spring Handicap Main Event of Initial Program. PAWTUCKET, R. I., April 21. Narragansett Park will open its sixth year of racing tomorrow afternoon, beginning a spring session that will run for nineteen days. The meeting will be only one of three that will be run during the spring, summer and fall at the Pawtucket grounds. In all there will be sixty-seven days of racing here. The track will be operating for the first time under a Republican administration and a Republican racing commission. Seven hundred and five horses were registered with secretary Bob Shelley this morning, and there are more than a hundred more on the grounds that have not yet been recorded. Shelley believes that between 200 and 300 more will arrive within the next week. While many of these are off form, or have arrived directly from winter grounds, there is ample material on hand to assure well filled races throughout the season. That quality is not lacking is best evidenced by the field for tomorrows ,000 added Spring Handicap, a six furlongs feature that drew twenty-one nominations on the 15th of the month and fourteen overnight acceptances. In the pack are such hard-hitting horses as Early Delivery, Wise Prince, Woodsaw, Be Blue and War Minstrel. JEARLY DELIVERY AT TOP. Early Delivery will be the starting high-weight under 115 pounds and looms as a slight choice, although Wise Prince, which bears the popular silks of Felix Spatolas stable, will be pressing him close for the post of favoritism. Early Delivery deserves a slight edge, however, due to his excellent race in the Paumonok at Jamaica, where he finished third to Johnstown and Pagliacci at the distance of tomorrows contest. Wise Prince was a bit off form in Florida Continued on thirty-second page. PAWTUCKETJNAUGURAL Continued from first page. this winter, but he has always fancied the Narragansett racing strip and may turn in a greatly improved effort over recent races. He is in the handicap under 113 and will be the second high weight. Don Meade, second leading rider of America at the present time, will ride throughout the season at Narragansett. He will have the mount on Early Delivery tomorrow and that fact alone will assure heavy support for Mrs. W. Plunket Stewarts campaigner. J. A. Nixs Woodsaw is one of the most i consistent horses in training. He is always I in there fighting and is very seldom out of i the money. He. looms as a very dangerous factor under 112 pounds and will be one of the choices in the betting. U-BOAT DANGEROUS. U-Boat is tossed into the race with the light package of 103. This mare has a tremendous amount of early speed and that will aid her materially in such a jammed field. She is by no means out of it, although she hardly appears to hold the class of those named above. War Minstrel has gone back since the days when he was one of the leading handicap performers of the New England racing sector, but he is lightly weighted itL iuo iiiiu il lit; uispmys Lup luiui miuuiu be right there. Clodion has raced creditably with the best horses in the land upon occasion and will be one of the higher-weighted horses under 112. Be Blue, Bold Turk and Be Jabbers have all shown their worth to New England fans and all should receive backing. The others named tomorrow are Mansco, Panther Creek, Gallant Stroke, Pit Terrier and Sirasia. Today was warm and sunny, and forecasts were for continued fair weather for the inaugural of the New England season, which will run into November, sessions being held at Suffolk Downs, in Boston, and Rockingham Park, in New Hampshire, as well as at Narragansett. Governor Vanderbilt has promised to divorce politics in racing entirely in Rhode Island, and racing commissioner Louis C. Gerry made the first move in this direction by asking the track to appoint its own officials. The commissioners approved all the appointments made by judge James Dooley and his associates in the racing association. FRANK BRYAN STEWARD. The state steward this season will be judge Frank Bryan, a veteran who is one of the most respected racing officials in the land. Tom Thorp and Sam Nuckols will serve with Bryan in the upper stand. The placing judges will be Howard Reynolds, Pat .Galli-ger and William Dahlstrom. Galliger will also assist Shelley in the secretarys office, and Dahlstrom will act as cleric of the scales. The patrol judges will be Tommy Steele and Harry Fiske, the latter a native Rhode Islander. Buddy Wingfield will again send the fields on their way. TNTarragansett was the only track at which Wingfield consented to serve during the coming season. The staff of officials appears to be the strongest ever assembled at Narragansett Park. The Spring Handicap is the first of four ,000 added features to be run at the meeting. It will be followed by the Portsmouth Handicap, for three-year-olds and upward, at a mile and a sixteenth; the Bristol Handicap, for three-year-olds and upward, at six furlongs, and the Newport Handicap, for three-year-olds and upward, at a mile and a sixteenth. Such important events as the 5000 Narragansett Special and the New England Futurity will come later in the year.
