view raw text
JUDGES STAND By Charles Hatton Week-End Stakes1 Bearing on Classic Keeneland Sales Casting Some Shadows Legal Books Would Be Ruinous to Sport Witch Sir Moves Into Stakes Column The richest, though perhaps not the most important of the week-end stakes is Empire-at-Jamaicas 0,000 Empire City for three-year-olds. It will be a kind of consolation prize for those who have been giving futile chase to Assault. It was run as the Empire City Handicap prior to 1944, but is now under stake conditions. As we have noted, the Texan would carry 130 if he ran, which he will not. He is good box-office, as Aqueduct gate receipts show, but has now run himself into a high tax bracket and will share the wealth while he rests for the Classic. By the way, he will carry 126 in the Classic. At the moment, Spy Song has 119 in the Arlington race. This is a shift of seven pounds off his second in the Derby. But if the whimsical Dixiana colt wins the Skokie here this week-end, he would carry 122 in the Classic. As matters now stand, Honeymoon would get into the Classic with 117, were she to come on for it. If she wins the Hollywood Derby she would carry 121. These things need not disturb you, but they turn trainers gray. The days "main event" out at Hollywood Park is the 5,000 Haggin Stakes, which is for California two-year-olds. L. B. Mayer, now the leading Hollywood owner with 28,260, hopes to win it with Stepfather, who is by Beau Pere and won the Laddie. He is in the Washington Park Futurity here and is, incidentally, out of a Donnatello mare that Mayer brought over. The Keeneland sales have swamped Lexington hotels with requests for reservations, which does not indicate any loss of interest. Brownie Leach tells us the arena is now being air-conditioned. "All the yearlings in the catalog may be stabled at Keeneland, and I suppose many of them will be after Tuesday, the 23rd." he said. The sales commence on Monday, July 29. A number of agents have talent scouted the yearlings on the farms, and a few tried to buy, but under the Breeders Stakes Company terms, none of the colts and fillies consigned may be sold privately after June 1. Breeders prefer to auction them anyway, as they have confidence in the market this year. Some ten or a dozen who wanted to consign yearlings to the Keeneland auctions were shut out, and more than200 colts and fillies were culled out by charter members. The catalogs are just off the. press and Leach says there is no change in the conditions governing the sales." William Woodward, in stating The Jockey Clubs opposition to the plan to legalize off-track .betting, said something which seems to iis well worth repeating. He said that "while racing is an industry, with vast investments and employees in 40 states, it is predicated on sport. Anything which tends to destroy that basic fact must inevitably destroy the entire structure." This is the steenth in a series of efforts to have off-track betting legalized in New York, and there was a move to legalize it out here in Illinois a couple of years ago, but nothing came of -it, fortunately for racing. It is only a matter of time until that 5 per cent extra take bleeds the public white. Even in Florida a governors committee is now studying the high take, and is expected to recommend that it be reduced. To legalize off -track betting would be the climax. It would destroy racing. There is now a certain amount of bootleg betting at the tracks, where bookmakers offer a shade more than tote odds. The plan in New York would create more of this sort of thing, away from the tracks, and we hope that nobody has any delusions about that. There is a limit to the extent racing can be taxed and survive. Arlingtons famed Equipoise Mile found the Chicagoan, Witch Sir, winning the first stake of his career, as one of the lightweights under 110 pounds. The four-year-old Sir Damion gelding did not have to come any nearer Equipoises mark than 1:37 to squeeze home. He was bred by Jay Weil and last year sold to Louis Schlosser, a local businessman, by private treaty. Weil also sold Witch Sirs dam, Epi Witch, by the way. Cromwell Bloodstock Agency, which sometimes speculates in horses, bought her for 00 at the Keeneland Fall auctions in 44. The result of the Equipoise gave more Chicagoans a sort of favorite phobia, as Armed could not quite get up under 132. Meanwhile we learn that his nemesis of last summer, the queenly Busher, has commenced to breeze out Hollywood way. Gallant old Equif ox made a game effort to bring off a third straight in this event honoring his sire, but moved as Armed did and both were a bit tardy, though they were running over horses at the finish. It may be that you have not heard the last of Equifox. Turfiana: Hagerstown, Md., once had a legalized book. It was only a matter of months until local politicos commenced fighting among themselves over a plan to open six more. The one they had was closed, by popular declaim. . . . Bob Kleberg is visiting Blue Grass farms. . . . The John Hertz Owners Choice ran well in his debut, from a horsemans point of view. The son of Blenheim n. is expected to improve. . . . Hertz will sell 12 at Keeneland. . . . The TRPBs Coffey conferred with the Illinois Board here the other day. . . . Honeymoon has now won more than 00,000. . . . Air Borne, the recent Epsom Derby winner, is ot the same family as our Black Toney. . . . Emu" Schwarzhaupt will be a bidder at Keeneland, as also will Mrs. Elizabeth Graham. . . . Quick Reward, winner of the 5,000 Inglewood for Norman Church, was a ,500 yearling. . . . Luke 6 Sneeds Hemet Squaw, who is perhaps the shiftiest of Californias two-year-old fillies, will be freshened for Santa Anita following the Hollywood meet. . . . Herbert Woolf has mated Blue dOr with 17 of his Woolford mares. ... He is said to have received a handsome offer from the West Coast for Historian.
