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Charles Hatton THE JUDGES STAND Bv Charles Matron Count No 1 U S Sport Figure 53rd Preakness Exhibition No Interference in Md Stake Pimlicos Meeting Success NEW YORK N Y May 10 10Count Count Fleet is now the outstanding figure in the entire mural of American sports And thoroughbred racing is by far the most popular wartime amusement Racing supersedes baseball and the prize ring partly because of the thinning ranks of entertainers of any notable box office appeal in those sports There are no Ruths Dempseys Tildens nor Joneses in other fields but in Count Fleet racing has a captain that challenges comparison with the best performers it has produced We came up from Pimlico last weekend with the hilltops director of racing Marse Tom Healey who is 76 and has been a part of the sport since he was 14 and saddled the winners of four Preaknesses not to mention tightening the girth on Equipoise Man o War Display Olambala Whichone and Boojum His perspec ¬ tive of thoroughbreds and thoroughbred racing is pro ¬ found and judicious Remarking upon the large Preak ¬ ness attendance he said They came to see Count Fleet today and he gave them a good show showRemembering Remembering that he already trained so many celebs down through the years and that he is not given to spouting paeans of superlatives in discussing horses our curiosity impelled us to ask Did you think Man o War ran any more impressively than that thatNo No Neither did any other horse he said matter offactly offactlyMrs Mrs Hertzs colt thus escapes the lefthanded compliment of being No steen in the succession of best horses since Man o War Like that champion and every other who raced often enough The Count has been beaten and will perhaps be beaten again They all strut their brief hour upon the stage But the sage Tom Healeys point is that Count Fleet is Count Pleet Not merely the best since some other horse but as impressive a runner as ever came down the pike pikeThe The Preakness was another of Americas more coveted stakes The Count trans ¬ formed into an exhibition of sheer speed and more speed As in the Wood Memorial he did hot actually trim the track record but he came so creditably close under so many wraps the effect was the same sameIn In the Run for the Blackeyed Susans Count Fleet breezed along under restraint all the way in the middle of a race track a second slow to the mile and three sixteenths iri 157 And with such consummate ease nobody doubted he could have reduced RiverlandX 156 even under the existing conditions had Longden so much as sneezed Once again The Count overran his finish so far some spec ¬ tators wondered if he were working out for the mile and a half of the Belmont BelmontWhen When Count Fleet pulled up scarcely drawing a long breath trainer Ed Christmas of Vincentive reiterated Count Fleet is the runningest horse I ever saw Provincial Marylanders incidentally made Vincentive second choice over Blue Swords But Allen Simmons colt perversely finished in the accustomed position runnerup to Count Fleet for the sixth time timeThe The thing about Count Fleet is he can twentytwo it and keep on twentytwoing it from here to China That is why I described him as a freak horse Christmas explained explainedBeat Beat him They havent even caught him yet yetIt It speaks for Blue Swords toughness of fibre incidentally that he followed Count Fleet so long before pulling up as he did Saturday However he cooled out nicely Paddock sharps say Vincentive is behaving like one of Joe Louis sparring partners since his encounter with The Count in the Wood He was calm cool and collected in the paddock until that experience Since then he has seemed a bit jittery in that enclosure enclosureHorses Horses have imagination you know If the average flabby sedentary Gothamite were one fine afternoon tossed into the ring with Louis he might be excused for quaking a little the next time he saw a ring It is the same with thoroughbreds thoroughbredsIf If Count Fleet set no track records in the Derby and Preakness he did establish two mutuel marks In each clasic he became the shortestpriced winner since the iron men came into vogue a generation ago And if1 Count Fleet sets a time record in the Belmont incidentally it will be inadvertently inadvertentlyLongdens Longdens task extraordinarily first is to keep his amazing mount from running too fast once he has killed off his field rather than seeing how fast he can induce Reigh Counts son to run runAs As John Hertz shrewdly points out it would be nonsensical to make unnecessary use of the colts speed for the sake of sheer exhibitionism Why the seasons just getting under way he observed It was intended to race him for a record in the Walden last fall but that was his final start of the season and a sudden rain discouraged the idea Mrs Hertz colt became a 200000 winner in the Preakness but his connections do not propose to exploit him as a moneymaking machine His schedule includes the classical fixtures such as the Withers Belmont Dwyer American Derby Arling ¬ ton Classic Travers Realization and Jockey Club Gold Cup It seems extremely unlikely he will deviate from his proposed tour de force to participate in any special races promoters at outlying courses may dream grandiosely of presenting The absence of a portion of coronary band on his left rear foot a con ¬ sequence of his contretemps at the start of the Wood Memorial has never been favored by Count Fleet and Cameron states the foot is healing nicely nicelyA A horses coronary band is like the quick of a humans finger nail so you can understand why Count Fleet ran on three legs the first 70 yards or so in the Wood when he was spiked That injury unlike that some other horses suffer in racing did not wait until the following morning to hurt i iIncidentally Incidentally the Preakness was the first race this year in which none of the field happened to jump on Count Fleet at the break breakAs As we remarked at the outset of this pillar of pure piffle The Count is the sports lovers favorite But we really should say a word or two about Pimlicos remarkable meeting It showed a 20 per cent increase in business compared to 1942s season despite the transportation restrictions and absenteeism decreased the while so Marylands powers that be now can conclude only that Pimlico helps rather than interferes with the war effort
