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BETWEEN I RACES Byt Oscar Otis 1 Camera Nears World-Wide Use Thoroughbred Price Drop Seen Finney Offers Wise Solution Another Hollywood Goose Girl HOLLYWOOD PARK, Inglewood, Calif., May 27. Bogert Rogers, of the Photo-Chart company, reveals that within the next month, the American camera will be in worldwide use. Negotiations are now nearing completion to install the device at Calcutta and Bombay, which will be about the last word in far-flung locales. The camera is particularly popular in South America, being currently used at the Hipo-dromo Nacional in Caracas, Venezuela, the tracks at Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile, and installations now are being made at the Palermo and San Ysidro tracks in Buenos Aires. South Africa is represented at courses near Johannesburg and Durban. Rogers reveals that during the worldwide tour of his sales representatives, the three American tracks best known are Belmont Park, Saratoga and Santa Anita. Which should give some comfort to the public relations job of Bob Kelley, of the New York racing associations, and Fred Purner, who toots the trumpet for Santa Anita in the winter and Lake Arrowhead of a summer. Rogers, has evinced a growing concern over the human element involved in the placing of horses, as witnessed at Portland Meadows Oregon last summer and from time to time variations from the photos at other tracks. To overcome this, he is working out a deal with Lloyds of London to insure tracks against this error. In all instances where such errors have .been made, the tracks have, without exception, paid off on both horses, in some instances at great financial loss. The insurance would make everybody happy. The "tote" people long have insured the tracks against mechanical errors, but never against the mistake, for instance, of a calculator. AAA A careful survey made in Kentucky, Maryland, New York and, finally, here in California, indicates that 95 per cent of the well-informed turfmen believe the value of thoroughbreds is in for a 10 per cent drop on everything but stake horses. The price on horses capable of winning stakes may even rise slightly, according to the experts, but they look for a decided drop in the value of the cheaper, or claiming variety, of thoroughbred. Of course, there will be no answer until the Keene-land sales in Kentucky, and the California Breeders sale in mid-July here on the West Coast. But the- evidence is mounting. In Kentucky, private sales of horses are the slowest in years. In New York, at least three trainers who annually weed out their racing stock for breeding owners, confided they are running horses about ,000 less than they would have last year, anticipating the market this fall. By offering their horses for claiming at apparently and, in fact, currently bargain prices, they are, in fact, insuring the disposition of their horses at what they think will be a good price this fall. AAA While it is. true that purses and stakes are holding up remarkably well in view of somewhat unsettled conditions in some other businesses, taken as a bell weather of the American racing economy, Humphrey Finney, one of the wiser horse thinkers of Maryland, and secretary and field director of the Maryland Breeders Association, told this writer recently that the discrepency in price between good horse and cheap horse appeared a certainty, regardless of the purses. He points out that the number of foals in Marynand, to use but one example, is rising sharply from year to year. Yet the racing opportunities remain about constant in the area where the Maryland rank and file produce is must apt to campaign, i. e., in the Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey sector. The cheaper horses will, of necessity, find the winners circle harder to find, and with racing opportunities limited, will find their price tags reacting accordingly. Finney has a solution, which for the industry would be a wise one, but for most individuals is not a particularly happy one. The solution is I simply this breed the best more and more to the best, and as for the worst, do not breed for racing at all. If one must breed to the worst, dispose of the produce to outlets other than the race course. It might be mentioned in passing, that Kentucky appears to hold the strongest redoubt against dropping prices, because much of the good blood in America is concentrated there under ideal breeding conditions. But the Kentucky market is racing one factor which will make it perhaps conform to the national trend, that being the slow growth of restrictive laws, namely, homebred races favored, in more and more localities. AAA Ever since Hollywood, Park opened, one I of the most striking features of the many adornments of the property has been the presence in the infield of the "goose girl." The goose girl is supposed to tend the flocks of ducks, swans and geese which clutter up the lakes no end, but, in fact, she is there for decorative purposes only. The goose girl is chosen by a group of Hollywood photographers, and the resultant publicity has gained some of those chosen a chance in the films. But most of them have gotten married and foregone a career before the kleig lights. The 1947 model of the goose girl, who was given a round of applause when she walked into the infield on opening dandy, is Ginger Marsh, a 19-year-old Inglewood beauty. t .,
