view raw text
Charles Hatton THE JUDGES STAND By Charles Hatton Good Morning Ready for Oaks Stake May Reveal Turf Queen Vincentive Preakness Hopeful Chase Leaders Going to New York BALTIMORE Md May 4 4Harry Harry Parr is staging a sensationally successful Pimlico spring turf season it seems to us Despite all manner of encumbrances ranging from the tedium of trolley service and a high noon first post through a squabble over officials to vague uncertainties about Maryland racings wartime future this Hilltop meeting is breaking 1942 attendance and handle marks There appears to exist a good deal of divergence among the powers that be as to when and how the Free State tracks mav operate but the public is notably singleminded in its attitude toward the sport As Preakness week moves on to Wednesdays 10000 Oaks the venerable Maryland Jockey Clubs harassed phones are buzzing constantly with requests for seat ¬ ing accommodations One need not be clairvoyant to predict as Parr has that Saturdays gate will approxi ¬ mate 30000 Handicapper Charley McLennan believes the Oaks will develop one of the meetings most enter ¬ taining events This mile and a sixteenth assumes an Bast vs West character with Harry Guggerjheimers Good Morning having journeyed from Long Island to resume her interesting feud with Hal Price Headleys Askmenow who came over the Blue Ridge from Kentucky Good Morning distinguished herself in the Florence Nightingale and Matron last autumn Ask menows most remunerative contribution to the Beau ¬ mont coffers in 42 was effected in her Selima triumph though she is perhaps more widely known as the charmer who literally vamped Count Fleet out of the Belmont Futurity At any rate the Pimlico Oaks heroine may very well turn out to be 1943 American racings glamour girl girlIt It is disappointing to find Roy Martins Our Page so conspicuously absent incidentally Unless she emerges on the racing scene soon we fear Our Page must forfeit her exalted status among those her age and sex sexIf sexi i If you can endure a bit of sportsdesk metaphor The Fleet sailed into Chesa ¬ peake Bay and captured Baltimore in practically no time at all as is his wont Dis ¬ turbing reports were in circulation Monday morning that Mrs John Hertzs rather meteoric homebred had contracted something pretty serious en route here from Derby town But it developed he had just the merest touch of gasonthetummy and was not really in the throes of colic So everyone went away from the unloading chute reassured and rhapsodizing pointsofinterest in The Counts conformation redeeming features scarcely anyone could discern this time last season As we noted upon his arrival at Belmont Park from Oaklawn Heigh Counts singularly swift son Is no longer painfully commonplace in appearance On the contrary he is growing apace and in a way that clearly suggests he will mature into quite a handsome specimen of stallion stallionThe The Preakness favorites underpinning is the captivation of his conformation for us while his muscularity before the saddle his girth and breadth across the hips are outsize These characteristics accentuate a deceptive appearance of lightness in the flanks flanksWith With odds of 2 to 5 in the Derby it seems impossible Don Camerons pet will be more than 1 to 5 in the Preakness and there is rather a portentous prospect of a minus pool Racing secretary McLennan inclines to wonder if more than four will parade in this run for the blackeyed susans The Counts rivals will come from among Blue Swords Vincentive Slide Rule who may await the Withers and possibly New Moon The division of the Preakness spoils prudently provides 10000 second money 5000 third and 2000 fourth fourthIn In the event he reports punctually at the wire in Saturdays classic Count Fleet will have virtually raced himself out of competition until summer when Ocean Wave Occupation and Devils Thumb appear Vincentive performed creditably here Monday when racing six furlongs in 111 while repelling Noonday Sun in The Parkway W L Branns Maryland bred son of Challenger n was not nominated for the Survivor He is expected to appear for the weekends mile and threesixteenths though trainer Ed Christmasi declares I never saw a horse that could run as Count Fleet does He makes distance races took like sprints sprintsVincentive Vincentive winner of the Maryland Futurity last autumn was entered as a kind of afterthought to oppose Mrs Hertzs homebred in the Pimlico Futurity He also gave dogged if futile pursuit in the Wood where he was forced into the Stoner Creek colt at the break But if persistence is rewarded we suppose it would be only poetic justice were the fates to first consider the sad case of Blue Swords who has made a career of being The Counts chaser chaserThis This recalls a bit of humorous blandishment at Louisville immediately after the Derby when Walter Kelley feigned indifference about the Preakness and Cameron entreated Please ship to Pimlico wont you I dont want any walkovers Good Chance is no hasbeen Say instead that he is ten years young After watching Good Chance rise to the emergency and capture the Jervis Spencer Steeplechase when his stablemate Mandingham came a cropper trainer Jack Skinner was moved to fancy that the latter would have won galloping had he kept his feet Be that as it may both are probables for Tuesdays International at Belmont Park Mandingham having picked himself up from this mishap unscathed unscathedCottesmore Cottesmore and Iron Shot also may be expected to entertain Belmonts tweedy chase set It is borne ever more urgently upon racing men that something must be done to regrade purse values to be commensurate with the worth of the horses Under the present somewhat cockeyed system a capable 1500 plater is a more valuable animal than one of racings problem children those inbetweens who are neither platers nor stakes horses Indeed it is not uncommon in recent years to see performers that might be claimed for 1500 racing for a purse of 2000 Whereas the animal hapless enough to fall into the category of being worth about 4000 actually has a choice of quixotically essaying to beat stakes horses or of exposing himself to the tender mercies of the haltermen haltermenThis This situation is hardly conducive to f ormful racing we should think There is something intrinsically the matter with a system that lends a cheap plater more potential earning capacity than is enjoyed by the thoroughbred whose worth is three times as much muchPimlicos Pimlicos stalls are filled this spring and while there is a usual complement of halfmilers present the Pimlico Jockey Club stakes features continue to lure the highest quality of performers to the hilltop The Dixie Pimlico Oaks Spencer Steeplechase and of coursethe Preakness all scintillated in this connection connectionThe The managements wisdom In electing to open earlier rather than conflict with Belmont is amply proved
