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Moves in the Right Direction By SALVATOR Two recent "new departures" in racings and breeding practices are being given publicity in the turf press these days which appeal to the writer as along lines that will promote the welfare of both racing and breeding. The first announced came from California in the shape of the news that at the coming great summer meeting at Hollywood Park, featured by the 00,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, 0,000 Hollywood Derby, etc., etc., a "spread" of the weights for the rich handicaps would be based upon one of 20 pounds. The second originated, we believe, in Kentucky, during the recent National Congress of State Racing Commissioners, and advocates the alteration from January 1 to an April date for the fixing of the ages of race horses. Serve Best Interests of Thoroughbred Both movements we consider well adapted to serve the best interests of the thoroughbred and deserve the support of all persons genuinely devoted thereto. The 20-pound spread adopted for the Hollywood handicaps is in line with what the writer has been advocating for years past. That is the unwisdom, if not the absolute destructiveness, of the assignments of heavy top weights In order, as the moss-grown excuse for them always puts it, "to bring the horses together and assure a real contest." In great stake events, and especially those of great value, the presence of horses that are not within 20 pounds of top stake class is an intrusion. They have no business in such races. Fields of low-class horses contending for high-class stakes is a howling anomaly. Its real raison detre is simply to enable "killings" to be made by the defeats of first-class horses by horses of no class — such, for instance, as that of Thumbs Up, 130 pounds, in the 0,000 Stars and Stripes Handicap two years ago by the seven-year-old selling plater, Devalue, 108 pounds, together with hosts of similar results that might be cited. Sacrifice the Good to Save the Bad The hoary argument ? that "horse racing is like that" is always pulled in defense of such things. But the fact is that the sooner horse racing ceases to be "like that" the better it will be for the sport. Such affairs leave an acid taste in the mouth. The nearest parallel we can imagine at the moment is, say, a performance of "Aida" at the Metropolitan Opera House with the title-role taken by a "blues" singer from a night club. What unduly high weights do to racing is an old, old story. They benefit the low-class performer at the expense of the high-class one, cause immense losses by the betting public for the benefit of small cliques of "insiders," and are, in most instances, blots upon the escutcheon of racing. The original excuse for such things was that, in order to give rich handicaps without loss, the racing associations must have the largest possible entry lists and fields of starters. Otherwise they could not risk them. This went down the wind long ago. The profits of the racing associations today are so enormous that one might as well com- ,mend a multi-millionaire for economy in the matter of cigarette paper. Morever, it has been demonstrated that excessively high weights are horse killers. Nothing breaks them down so remorselessly, especially when the high-weight carriers are compelled to make immense concessions to the lightweights. This condition has been much aggravated in this country where first-class horses will be started from twenty to thirty times a year, whereas abroad from six to eight is the rule. Excessively high weight may be carried at well-spaced intervals by stout horses without injury. But when one is saddled every week — or even oftener — and asked to do it, the break-down is inevitable. Age Date Originally May 1 At very rare intervals an exceptional individual appeared able to sustain such a fight season after season, Exterminator being the standard example. But there has been only one Exterminator as against hosts of instances of horses that have been ruined in the attempt to do the impossible. As regards the proposed change from the January 1 to the April date for the reckoning of racing age, it will at first seem like turning the clock back a hundred years. In England, the mother country of racing, racing age was originally set at May 1. This rule held good up to 1858, when it was changed to read January 1 by The Jockey Club. In the United States the English rule was followed up to 1861, when the Civil War broke out. It lasted to the spring of 1865, during which period racing was almost wholly suspended. On the close of the war, when racing was revived, with its control shifted from the Old South to New York, the new English rule was adopted and the January 1 date substituted. There was considerable objection to this in the South and for several years some of the jockey clubs down there adhered to the old May 1 date, but they soon abandoned it and fell in line with the new one as their opposition was ineffective and impossible to sustain. Longer Racing Life for Horses The raison detre of the proposed April date by its advancers is, as might be expected, to prevent the wholesale slaughter of two-year-olds, at our protracted winter meetings, where hosts of them are killed off by being started on January 1 and continuously thereafter when they are not yet two years old, sometimes by a margin of three or four months. That this is another ruinous practice has always been admitted, but opposition to it has proved ineffective because of the large number of two-year-olds technical in training and the unwisdom of the track managers who have catered to their owners greed, regardless of all else. Occasionally a colt that has raced in these events has "gone on" — with much-to-do made over the fact. But such colts are of the Exterminator order in their own class and are not criterions in view of the multitudes that have been burnt out alongside them. Anything that will tend to curb the abuse of two-year-old racing as at present carried on in this country deserves the support of all persons with any pretense of regard for the "improvement of the breed of horses," on the one hand, or the welfare of individual members of it on the other.
