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I BETWEEN RACES I By Oscar Otis x Busher Big Attraction at Hollywood Queen Points for Vanity, Gold Cup On Trust Proves Air Travel Merits Arjuna Will Invade Spa in August HOLLYWOOD PARK, Inglewood, Calif., May 28. Cynosure of all eyes in a morning trial is Busher, the mighty mare owned by Neil S. McCarthy? Los Angeles attorney, breeder, and sportsman. Practically all other activity stops when she makes her morning rounds. And while only a few visitors get into the closely guarded stable area, most of those that obtain the credentials ask if they can see her. One of our first chores on arrival from the East Coast was to check in at the barn and take a look for ourselves. We were pleasantly surprised to see trainer Paul Lycan on the job following his recuperation from a heart attack and a lengthy convalescence. Lycan was kept in bed for 40 days on orders of the doctor, but all during that time, supervised the training of the horses by telephone. He was given an able assist by Frank A Carreaud, who, while his recent thoroughbred activities have been limited, once cut a niche in the annals of the turf through his successful stakes campaigning of Time Supply. "Busher has been working smart miles," said Lycan. "She is about three weeks away from a race. Mr. McCarthy intends to start her in an allowance race as her first comeback effort, and after that, perhaps her first real test will be in the Vanity, a mile and a sixteenth event for fillies and mares on July 19. If everything goes as expected, she will, of course, be a starter in the 00,- 000 Gold Cup on July 26." AAA Bushers training regime for a comeback was carefully plotted in advance. Those who saw Busher in the sales ring of the Fasig-Tipton Company at Santa Anita last winter will recall she was as fat as the proverbial "butter ball." Well, maybe not exactly fat, but she was at least pleasingly plump, and looked every inch the queen she is. To get her into racing fitness it was decided to start over at the very beginning, despite the fact that under trainer Graceton Philpot she had galloped in splendid fashion earlier in the Santa Anita season. She was given a "ball," sent to the Louis B. Mayer farm and turned out to pasture. Her diet was rigidly watched, and scampering around a spacious area all her own, she lost some 50 pounds of excess weight before being taken up and returned to the track. McCarthy, a pioneer and leader among California breeders, saw to it that she lost the weight in scientific fashion, without undue stress on the underpinning. The wisdom of the method is apparent now. She has dropped another 25 pounds in her serious training drills, and, as far as McCarthy, trainer Lycan, aide extraordinary Carreaud, and the vet in consultation is concerned, Busher is as sound as she ever was in her life. By this, 1 mean racing soundness at the moment. At this time, the chances that she will stand training and stakes campaigning are exceedingly bright. Our eastern readers might be interested to know that On Trust, which made gallant tries in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, came back to California in just as good shape as when he left, which will be interesting news to the many owners and trainers contemplating their first aerial shipments this summer and fall. Despite flying cross country and back, and engaging in two gruelling distance races, On Trust failed to lose much weight, if any, and trainer Willie Molter says that he is just as good now as the day he emplaned upon his flying invasion of the Blue Grass and Greenspring valley areas. However, j Molter does qualify his otherwise unquali- fied approval of air transport by conced- ing that On Trust is a superior traveller to begin with, and that nervous, fretty horses might not have such good luck as was had with On Trust. AAA Jack Shettlesworth, a former groom who dreamed of racing his own stable while fighting many weary months with a Marine unit in the coral wastes of South Pacific islands, and who made that dream come true following his discharge, came within an inch of sending the homebred Arjuna to the Preakness on a supplemental nomination. He is sorry now that he didnt. Not the one to worry about what might have been, he is now determined to send Arjuna on a flying foray to New York a little later, and to that end, has nominated him in the Travers at Saratoga, and will engage the son of Firozepore in other eastern classics. While it may be, as some contend, that our three-year-old crop this year is not of the vintage variety, at the same time, there are a lot of horses which apparently can run all day. Arjuna is but one of several developed in the West this spring to date that has shown the earmarks of a "Cup Horse." Like several owners of such horses, Shettlesworth is keenly interested in the Empire City Gold Cup, weight-for-age. He would like to race Arjuna in that. However, he also wants to run him in the Hollywood Derby, scheduled just a week before the Empire City event, and the interim of but a week has almost proven itself as being too short a time to ship a horse across the continent and retain razor edge. The evidence to date indicates at least 10 days, and preferably two weeks, is the best time to allow between air shipment and actual racing on such aerial excursions.
