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CHALLEDON AT DELAWARE PL Brann Stable Has Formidable String at Stanton Course. Three-Year-Old Star Kent Handicap Nominee — Johnstown Among Eligibles for Diamond State Stakes. WILMINGTON, Del., May 18.— It was at Delaware Park last summer that Challedon, Maryland-bred son of Challenger II. and Laura Gal, which reinjected himself into the struggle for the current seasons three-year-old championship at Pimlico last Saturday by beating a field of five in the forty-ninth Preakness, began a racing career that has added about 30,000 to the bank balance of Walter Brann, his breeder and owner. He has come back to the new course at Stanton. With him in the charge of Louis Schaefer, who was a star jockey with Earl Sande, another new, but hop hole trainer of the time, are those other not inconsiderable sons of Challenger II., Challepon and Aethelwold and a dozen other racing hopefuls of assorted ages. Maybe there is another Challedon in the lot? Schaefer hopes so anyhow. PROMISING MATERIAL. There are some good lookers among the two-year-old home-breds from Glade Valley, which is in Frederick County, Md., and they have not been hurried. Schaefer may not have much of an idea of the possibilities in the best of them until well along in the summer. Schaefer had no notion July 6, last, when he was saddling Challedon in the tree-shaded paddock of Delaware Park for a condition race of five and a half furlongs, in which he was to be beaten by the earlier winners, Birch Rod and the Maryland-bred Buds Bell, that he was sweating over a potential three-year-old champion. Challedon had revealed speed in work and he appeared to have plenty of stamina. He wasnt a rocket from the starting stall. However, Schaefer would have rated him a success if he had not done more than about a quarter of what he has done since. No man can ever tell about a race horse and race horses cant talk. EARLY SEASON DEFEATS. It was in the fall, when he was winning those three Futurities — the Maryland, the New England and the Pimlico— that were to net 7,700 and boost him to second place among contemporary juvenile gleaners, that he became what the trade calls a fine three-year-old prospect. But in the minds of many he eliminated himself from three-year-old championship competition earlier in the spring when he failed to beat Gilded Knight and Impound in the Chesapeake revival at Havre de Grace and permitted Johnstown to gallop home seven or eight lengths in front of him in the sixty-fifth running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Johnstown took a worse licking in the Preakness from Challedon than he had administered to the Maryland colt in the Derby. The Jamestowns colt alibiers laid the result of the Preakness to muddy going. Maybe mud does handicap* the big-striding pride of William Woodwards stable some. Nevertheless, Challedon, which had revealed a positive liking for soft stuff in the New England Futurity, won the Preakness easily, and old-timers are not disposed to accept the mud excuse. There is a saying as old as racing that "one does not have to carry a track around for a good horse." MAY RENEW FEUD. It is possible that patrons of Delaware Park racing will witness a renewal of this rivalry between Challedon and Johnstown. Both colts are in the Kent Handicap, a 0,000 added money dash of one mile and a sixteenth, exclusively for three-year-olds, set for Saturday, June 24, and Simpson Dean and Edward Burke and the other executives and associates in Delaware Park management are fairly bursting with hope. Schaefer himself does not know what he will do in the immediate future with the Challenger II. colt. That performance of Challedons at Pimlico, coupled with the unexpected deflation of Johnstowns championship boom, flabbergasted him. He has to have time in which to recatch his breath. The Kent is the only Delaware Park annual in which Challedon may start. Johnstown, however, is in the Diamond State, a ,000 dash of one mile and a furlong for three-year-olds alone, that will be revived July 1. Challephens and Aethelwolds engagements are in the Brandywine and Sussex Handicaps, the Sussex being a 0,000 gallop of one mile and a quarter that will feature Fourth-of-July racing. Savage Beauty, a daughter of Challenger II. and Khara, which finished second at Stanton last summer to the brilliant Marica in the first revival of the Newcastle Stakes and beat Es-posa, is in the Sussex, too. She is an own sister of Aethelwold, Aethelwold being a new handicap threat. Challephen won Granite State and Southern Maryland handicaps last, season.
