view raw text
♦ THE JUDGES STAND By Charles Hatton ! HBPA of Service to Racing Auxiliary for Stable Help Queens Track Is Form Hazard Californias Un-Native Son NEW YORK, N. Y., June 16. It is doubtful if anything that has occurred in the circuit of American racing during recent weeks is more "significant" than the convention of the Horsemens Benevolent and Protective Association at Chicago. It is not that the HBPA went on some grandiose binge of adopting revolutionary reforms* or seeks to administer the turfs ills with some sweeping panacea. It made rather a point of doing nothing of the kind. The thing about the HBPA is that it is a dignified, conservative organization of about 3,000 horsemen that is well represented and firmly entrenched in all turf centers. It very definitely does not regard itself as a union and is not throwing its .. weight weight and and influence influence about about demanding demanding things things of of the the weight weight and and influence influence about about demanding demanding things things of of the the National Association of State Racing Commissioners, Turf Committee of America, The Jockey Club, Thoroughbred Racing Associations of the United States or any other organization. What the HBPA hopes to achieve is a cooperation among horsemen, the tracks and other turf bodies toward the best interests of the industry in general. Every experienced horseman is only too well aware that anything which would impair the progress of any other department in racing sooner or later reacts disadvantageous to him. So the HBPA is not likely to make any ill-advised or exorbitant requests of the commissions or the tracks, if that is what you are thinking, you old skeptic. We are told by MaJ. Tom McCreery, national chairman of the HBPA, that, under a new chairman of the HBPA, that, under a new "7 j y, amend- v. ment to its by-laws, the grooms, exercise boys and platers are eligible for membership in an auxiliary of the organization. The dues are nominal in the extreme, about per annum, we believe, and the benefits include insurance, hospitalization and medical care. There long has existed in American racing a rather urgent need for some such organized effort to cope with this welfare problem. It is understood this auxiliary would not have voting power in the HBPA, but would be represented by a committee to present suggestions or recommendations in formal meetings with the parent bodys officers. This all seems eminently fair. The i potential membership of the auxiliary is much greater than that of the HBPA itself, since there are more grooms and exercise boys than trainers, so that to allow these , beneficiaries a vote would be an excess of magnanimity. The Horsemens Benevolent and Protective Association and the American Train-1"1 ers* Association, incidentally, are allied in principle; though not in fact. Recently they conferred on the somewhat poignant situation of the shortage of stablemen at Long Island tracks. There is an obscure Jockey Club rule, but a rule, nevertheless, which would assist in controlling the bidding for the services of exercise boys and grooms, if it were rigidly enforced. This regulation prescribes a fine of 00 against trainers hiring a stable hand unless the applicant produces a signed release from his former employer. This bidding has, on some occasions, gone quite beyond the point where the defendant or the employe can even hope to excuse his action with a discourse on "the living wage." To anyone familiar with salaries and efficiency previous to the wars incursions on the number of available men and boys, the sums some of the inept lads and superannuated stable hands demand, and are paid, seem downright fantastic. Previous to the Queens County Jockey Clubs present early summer season, this I j | observer made some deference to what seems an opportunity for improvement in the ! Aqueduct racing strip. Umpty-umph horses, a conservative estimate, have since taken l a Cooks tour of the course on the abrupt home turn, which is no less hair-raising ; than those mountain bends around which autos careened in Mack Sennett comedies. . The most frightful outshoot was that of Lt. Alfred Vanderbilts Extra Base, who, last ; week, crashed through the outside fence, while Wayne Wright executed a triple somersault . from which, by some minor miracle, he emerged able to assume a perpendicular . posture. This bend is Aqueducts version of Epsoms angular Tattenham Corner. What happens is that horses neglect to change stride or race into the bend too rapidly, all too often with devastating consequences to horse players purses. This is "X, the unknown equation" in form students calculations at Aqueducts meetings. The course is something less than safe for thoroughbreds when it is wet. For it then presents a hardpan bottom. Remedying these deficiencies horsemen so frequently are heard to complain about, would be quite a project, one imagines. The radius of the home turn might have to be altered and re-graded and the entire surface treated with an admixture of loam. Harold A. Clark, who is claimed eagerly by both Florida and Louisiana, is a 1 comparative newcomer to the owners ranks who has experienced a strange kind of "beginners luck." Easily the two most competent runners to have sported his increasingly familiar colors are Royal Man and Riverland. Both encountered a cruel fate. Royal Man, we recall all too vividly, was fatally injured when he broke a hind leg in a particularly bad spill two winters back at Tropical Park, when he was one of a dozen horses strewn about the course at "the hot corner" in something that looked like an unnerving surrealist mural. Riverland may be destroyed as an eventuality of his misadventure in the Carter, when he fractured the socket of a whirlbone. Of course, neither Royal Man nor Riverland owes Clark anything. Our only excuse for this sensationally banal paragraph is that the curious tangent beginners luck as ... taken in Clarks instance probably has no precedent. Californias native sons doubtless will rejoice at the news that Bing Crosbys colorful Latin-American namesake, Don Bingo, is progressing so encouragingly in his Brooklyn Handicap prep. The broken-tailed son of Serio demonstrated in his unexpected Suburban triumph he can sustain excellent speed at a distance. The 0,000 Brooklyn, also at the highly popular and exacting mile and a quarter route, may pose a question if Don Bingo can handle a respectable weight. Meanwhile, it seems a pity that crooner Crosbys Del Mar is a war casualty and that there is a lapse in renewals of the 00,000 Santa Anita Handicap.
