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Sssfcv JUDGES STAND I By Charles Hatton Name Horses Widely Scattered This Year Saratoga Will Provide New Brush Course Preoccupy Another Promising Two-Year-Old High Class Field Looms in Top Flight NEW YORK, N. Y., May 23. Turfiana: A total of 800 horses from 2,000 applicants have Monmouth stalls. . . . Ma j. Ednyfed Williams suggests that track fans can help in the drive to feed starving millions abroad by skipping the bread and butter with their snacks. ... A number of racing men went to Meadow Brook the other evening to see a demonstration of the starting gate for trotters. . . . Herbie Shaw, who is in charge of the top floor of Hialeahs swanky club, will have the admission crew at Monmouth. . . . It seemed a nice gesture when Detroit originated a system of awards for grooms a few years ago. ... A few New York owners and trainers were disturbed when their charges came away from the saliva box with sore mouths, but it is said only distilled water is used on the swabs. . . . George McNulty, in charge of the New York gate men, formerly was a fingerprint expert in the citys employ. . . . Spring Thaw was supposed to be the "good one" of the Wheatley entry when Keynote won so impressively. She surprised even Ogden Phipps. . . . Frank Stevens says the decrease in business is noticeable at concessions, too. . . . Many horsemen think the abandoned juvenile course made for truer races than the Widener chute, where inside post positions are a handicap. The "name" horses are pretty well scattered this year. Each area we visit has its favorites. For example, we hear much well-deserved praise for Gallorette here in the East. But at Hollywood Park there is Busher. In the handicap class the East has Stymie, in the Middle West its Armed, now invading this coast. Among the three-year-olds there is the local development, Assault. His rival, Lord Boswell, ranges from coast to coast. When we began writing of racing about 20 years ago the handicappers were inclined to discount the form of horses that raced outside New York State. And at that time they usually were safe in so doing. But it is now a fallacy to imagine that any circuit has a monopoly on the really good horses. This seems to us a healthful thing for the sport. And there will be more of it when horses "commence flying through the air like lightning bugs," as Bill Corum puts it. There are more richer races for the chasers, timber-toppers and hedge horses this year. Jack Cooper, who writes the conditions for racers through the field here in New York, tells us that: "We went over the Aqueduct program with representatives of the Delaware course, to avoid conflicts in our stakes." The Queens County Club will concentrate on hurdle racing while the Wilmington track is staging its chase events toward the close of the meeting. It was originally intended, by the way, that flat racing should be given only negligible importance at Delaware Park and two hedge courses were built. This idea was abandoned, of course, but Delaware still makes quite a fuss over its chase races. Saratoga Springs will have a new brush track this summer and the plants idleness has benefited the steeplechase course. Pine will be used in the hedges. Long Island tracks use cedar. Not that it is likely to matter much to the horses. Cooper notes that Jim Ryan is about the only steeplechase man who imports jumpers nowadays. He brought over a half dozen from Ireland this spring. Ryan says the Irish think nothing at all of asking 0,000 for a "prospect." Under the tax system there, horses can be bought for about 15 cents on the dollar. This naturally does not encourage their importation here. When Eternal War, who is a nice colt, won the Juvenile there was a tendency to give him the palm as the smartest of the two-year-olds without any further ado. Nothing much was made of the fact that Preoccupy won the Joliet at Lincoln Fields at Hawthorne the same afternoon. But Preoccupy is nevertheless regarded as a keener prospect than either of his brothers, Occupation and Occupy, were at the same age. Preoccupy beat a shifty sort of colt in Colonel OF. We are not at all sure, for that matter, that Jet Pilot is not a worthy rival for either of these colts. The two-year-old division is in fact full of contention and more may be developed at Hollywood Park. The notion here is that it will take a pretty good one to eventually head the list. We incline to prefer First Flight of those we have seen thus far. At any rate, it is not guessing to say she has run the fastest. The Top Flight on next Wednesday at Belmont Park seems to have caught the interest of turf fans to a much greater degree than is usual. Perhaps this is because fillies and mares are playing such a prominent part in racing, and the Top Flight is the first of New Yorks series of rich stakes for them. Weights for this 0,000 run of a mile and a sixteenth are due, and it goes almost without saying that W. L. Branns Gallorette will be the topweight. The field will be one of genuine class with Recce, War Date, Athene, Earshot, Darby Dunedin and Sicily among the eligibles. The recent Coaching Club American Oaks did not furnish a candidate as Hypnotic is not nominated. Nor is Beaugay eligible. The Acorn winner, Earshot, is best recommended of the three-year-old possibilities, off recent public form. But Athene is reported to be training well. Hypnotic ran in improved form in the CCA Oaks, as her stablemate, Bonnie Beryl, was generally rated best of the Woodward hopes. Red Shoes was not disgraced. Her Tennessee owner, Howell E. Jackson, is a grandson of the General Jackson who owned Belle Meade.
