view raw text
► I Ik fl JUDGES STAND Br charles hatton DELAWARE PARK, Stanton, Del., June 21.— C. V. Whitney and trainer Sylvester Veitch yesterday conferred on future plans for the Belmont winner, Counterpoint, and it has been definitely decided to start him next in Aqueducts Dwyer on July 7. Soon thereafter he will be shipped shipped to to Arlington Arlington Park Park to to compete compete shipped shipped to to Arlington Arlington Park Park to to compete compete for the Classic on July 21. Counterpoint has had rather a checkered career, progressing from a more or less "hopeless cripple" into a foremost aspirant for three-year-old honors. "We didnt get to try him as a yearling," Veitch recalls, "he came in from the field one day with a cracked sesamoid, and just stood in his stall from September until February. Sesamoid trouble usually is the beginning of the end, but he was young and when we got him going under the shed he went soundly, as if it had knit fully. Even so, he didnt seem much of a prospect. But he has improved steadily and is tough for such a light-bodied colt." Counterpoint first ran like a race horse in the Blue Grass Stakes, when he was in trouble, than came again. He was beaten at the start of the Derby. "Hes still green," Veitch observes, "We tried him in blinkers, but they bewildered him. Sometimes he just looks at a horse when they run up beside him. We have been turning him out three days a week at Old Westbury. Hes tight enough, and this relaxes him." Counterpoint is incomparably the best foal from Jabot, who won the Selima foM2. V. Whitney. She objected so strenuously to the stall gates she was retired. She was a masculine sort of mare, foaled some deformed fillies, none of them retained for the stud, and died after producing Counterpoint. The Whitney colt is "in every thing," the Dwyer, Classic, American Derby and Maturity. Veitch has been training horses five years and has developed two Belmont winners and a Futurity winner. AAA Back in Chicago, several weeks ago, it was noted that a downstate legislator had introduced a bill to increase the mutuel tariff to 14 per cent. Revenue from the additional one per cent would be used to develop the lakefront or some such nonsense. Racings leaders refused Counterpoint to Bid for Dwyer and Classic Boards Stand on Illinois Bill Significant Kiss Me Kate Lively New Castle Prospect Count Fleet Current Leader of 7957 Sires to be upset about the bill at the time, theorizing that the legislature would adjourn before any action was possible. Perhaps the sports interests still will be saved by the bell, but the fact that the measure passed the House by 105 to 0 and was approved by a Senate committee 15 to 2, isnt very reassuring. It is significant that the Illinois Racing Board, appointed to protect the states interests, is actively opposed to this legislation. In the end it would defeat its own purposes, as it would be harmful to the source of racings revenue. Ben Lindheimer observes, and accurately, we think, that Chicago isnt a very good racing center considering the ratio of racegoers to population. He has been trying to develop it, but an increase in the commission on the play would make it just that much more difficult. AAA Kiss Me Kate simply ran all over the Delaware Oaks field and may try the older mares in next week-ends New Castle Handicap at a mile and a quarter. Weights for this 0,000, richest stake of the meeting, are due late Monday. Kiss Me Kate is one of the few 1951 three-year-olds who seem able to put two good races together. She showed a new facet of her talent in the Delaware Oaks, where Mehrtens rated her off the pace. Heretofore she had set or forced it. Walter Jeffords was on hand for the race and he tells us that Kiss Me Kates dam, Irish Nora, is a half-sister of the dam of Adile, who won the 1950 New Castle for Mrs. Jeffords and is eligible again this year. They descend from a mare called Bel Agnes, the Philadelphian purchased some years ago. Kiss Me Kate is the handsomest of her age and sex, a broad-beamed chestnut with a blaze and a breedy neck, just the sort that sends the Virginia horse show enthusiasts. Billy Winfrey was here the other day and we learn that he is training Next Move with the New Castle in view. Alfred Vanderbilts filly came out of the Firenze with abrasions about the right foreleg, but now is good as new. Winfrey plans to take up Bed o Roses, who has been mending at Sagamore, within a few days, and hopes to have her up to the races in August. She hasnt started since Santa Anita, where x-rays showed a hairline crack in one foot. Winfrey, incidentally, inclines to agree that Bed o* Roses is more resolute if less flashy than is Next Move. The difference is the same as that between Don Ross Greek Song and Cochise, and The Chief and Stagehand, whom Earl Sande used to race for the late Col. Maxwell Howard. AAA John Hertz Count Fleet now is the leading sire of 1951, and with such as Counterpoint, Count Turf, Kiss Me Kate and Astro to represent him in such valuable races as the Classic, American Derby, Arlington Matron and New Castle, his position appears fairly secure. At least through yearling sales time. Some of the first Count Fleets were fast but rather erratic, and had difficulty progressing beyond the "winners of one" category. But he has emerged as a first-rate sire of classic performers during the first half of this season. He is a very vigorous, potent animal and has nearly 40 two-year-olds to represent him. When Count Fleet was retired, Hertz remarked, "If he is going to be a successful sire, he will show it in his first three crops." Its difficult to recall a sire who became a more pronounced success in a shorter space of time. AAA Turf ana: Mameluke, who has broken out in a rash of splints, will race no more this year. The plates were pulled off him the other day, and he is to be blistered, then turned out . . . Jack Skinner, traditional leading chase trainer, has shipped his trainees here. . .Recces daughter, Recess, is a bad hay eater, nevertheless a good prospect for filly stakes. . Detroit Park distribution has some of the horsemen muttering in their condition books. But we are told the stockholders havent made a farthing up to now . . Battlefield went a mile and a half in the Belmont, and we think it safe to say he will stay . . . Among Arthur Whites charges here is the fencer, Patrol, one of the last Man o Wars.
