view raw text
FAIRM0UNT OPENING MAY 6 Only Five Days Per Week Scheduled at Collinsville. Cancellation at Aurora and Other Incidents Result in Extra Number of Horses Regulars Return. COLLINSVILLE, 111., April 25. Fairmount Park lifts the curtain to its spring meeting Saturday, May 6, and for the first time in Illinois racing will be instituted on a five-day week plan. The twenty-seven day campaign will see the elimination of Monday racing as well as on the Sabbath, providing six Saturdays and the Decoration Day holiday. The curtain on the meeting will fall on Saturday, June 10. Cancellation of the spring meeting at Aurora, and an announced purse distribution of 35,500 will result in Fairmount Park housing the best crop of thoroughbreds in the coming campaign than in probably the last decade. Many leading stables, which formerly raced at Aurora, then moved to the Chicago circuit, are already on the scene or coming. Clarence E. Davison, Harold Nel-lor, L. W. Kidd and the Blue Ridge Farm stable are several of the new ones already here. So brisk is the demand for stall room, all available space has already been allotted. JOCKEY DEW RETURNS. Earl Dew, the brilliant apprentice who led the riders at Fairmount Park last fall and was on his way to similar honors at New Orleans when halted by an mjury jinx, will defend his title at the spring meeting, starting May 6. Dew will face plenty of spirited competition for a partial list of riders already assured of being here reveals the names of Henry Hauer, Willie Prehm, Tom P. Martin, Otto Grohs, Willie Page, Charley Fields and others. Hauer, Eehm, Martin and Grohs will all be here for the first time. Clyde Troutt, the Benton, 111., turfman, who is racing his own stable again after a term with Mrs. J. D. Hertz, the Chicago sportswoman, will introduce two former metropolitan stars, Polycletus and Rough Diamond in his stable of seven during the coming Fairmount Park meeting. Polycletus, formerly handled by the peer of jockeys, Earl Sande, won six races for Troutt in New Orleans, while Rough Diamond, formerly campaigned by C. V. Whitney, won three races at the same track. Both are sure to be popular here. EFFECTS OF LANDSCAPING. Landscaping effects being worked out by track superintendent John Le Blanc will further enhance Fairmount Parks position as the "Showplace of Southern Illinois." Seventy-six different kinds of flowers, with a profusion also of plants and shrubbery, have been sowed for the season, starting May 6, and they will soon bloom in colorful splendor. The pine trees formerly growing in jthe infield have been transplanted to the clubhouse area to provide fans a clear racing view around the track. Plaudaway, two-year-old filly sensation of New Orleans, is ready to return to the racing wars when Fairmount Park opens, May 6. Fully recovered from bucked shins, which caused her lone defeat in three starts, owner Harold Nellor plans to start the Crescent City quarter-mile track record holder early in the meeting. Nellor rejected a 0,-000 bid for Plaudaway this winter, believing he has in her one of the best juveniles of the year. Henry R. Riley, one of the toasts of the jockey colony from 1930 to 1933, will make his Fairmount Park debut as a trainer this spring with a one-horse stable of Har-Jo. Riley was a riding sensation here in 1930, the year he went on to national honors. The following year Riley was signed by the noted Greentree Stable. Weight, the bugaboo of all jockeys, forced Riley to the sidelines. He tips the beams now at 145 pounds. Norman "Butsey" Hernandez, leading owner and trainer of last falls Fairmount Park meeting, and champion also of the recent New Orleans meeting, has returned sixteen norses to try ior nis tnira stiaignc tine. Roidef, the three-year-old which upset the best sprinters in New Orleans; Bad Roll, and several two-year-olds are new ones in the barn which is still headed by the local favorite, Prince Argo.