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JUDGES STAND By Charles Hatton * . Preakness Field Encourages Small Owners Handsome Teddy Maryland-Bred by Mistake Jack Hodgins Rates Sub Fleet His Best Heres Hoping Retires With Downs Victory PIMLICO, Baltimore, Md.f May 15. Turfmen have often remarked how difficult it is to buy a ready-made stakes horse in the present day, but the field for the 5,000 added Preakness encourages a thought one can some times claim a potential classic colt. For example Jampol, who won the Preakness Prep, was claimed by Max Kahlbaum for ,000 from Phil Godfrey last spring at Garden State Park. And several others of the entrants were exposed to the haltermen at one time or another during their careers. There is Arroz, who ran for ,500 on February 2, as a two-year-old, at Santa Anita, later was beaten racing for 0,000 in April at Bay Meadows, and eluded Californias extremely active haltermen on each occasion. Sam E. Wilson, Jr., ran Gushing Oil to be claimed for ,500 last August 8 at Washington Park, and took him home though the Easy Mon colt won his race by eight lengths. Arthur Abbott says it still gives him a cold chill to reflect that he ran Blue Man, one of the Preakness choices, in claimers last season. The son of Blue Swords might have been acquired for 0,000 when he won a Jamaica sprint in May, and two months later he raced for 2,500. There are many visitors to Blue Mans stable here at Pimlico, and it amuses "Woody" Stephens assistants that these guests always look so incredulous when it is casually remarked that a dusky filly in the adjoining stall whipped him. This is Royce Martins homebred Our Dorie, a stakes filly who herself was racing to be claimed when she led Blue Man by 14 lengths in the race in which he ran for 2,500. Steve Judge was training Blue Man at the time. Many racing people dislike to claim horses, and, of course, it is a longshot when a potential Preakness horse is acquired in this way. But the field for this "Run for the Black-Eyed Susans" is something to encourage those who do not own " breeding farms and cannot pay the fanciful prices realized for yearlings that promise to develop into stakes horses. This thing of where horses are bred and foaled seems important everywhere one goes, except in the Blue Grass, where they can afford to appear a little bit smug about it. Lapsing: into an analytical mood, Don Reid traced the origin of the Preakness eligibles the other day, and found that 11 hail from Kentucky, Count Flame and Jampol from Virginia, Arroz from California, and Handsome Teddy from Maryland. It is said that Handsome Teddy, actually bred in Virginia, got foaled in Maryland by mis- take. No pun is intended, though one cynic insists this is always a mistake. It seems Bayard Tuckerman had a season to Director J. E., who stands at Ray Brysons El Ray Farm here, and selected a mare to be bred to him. There was some confusion and another of his mares, Wanna Hygro, was shipped instead. She was carrying Handsome Teddy at the time and after foaling him was bred to Director J. E. The result is the two-year-old filly, Cedar Jungle. She has been placed and started in the Rosedale, on the whole showing more promise than many two-year-olds bred on purpose, after much deliberation about nicks and so on. Colonel Chinn declares that good horses have been bred in all the 47 states and California. This week-end at CranwoOd they honor an Ohio-bred, Imp, with a feature named for her. Back in the Gay Nineties this product of Chillicothe ran in some 170 races people know about and won 62 and 0,119, exclusive of some races in Illinois and Indiana that do not show in the books. Imp toured the bushes, racing at Lakeside, Ind., and Harlem, and then amazed New Yorkers by winning the Suburban. She beat Ethelbert, Ogden and Sidney Lucas, progressed to 137 in the handicaps, and became a popular favorite in the East. A black in color, Landers band took to welcoming her to the winners circle by striking up "My Coal Black Lady." We understand they will play this at Cranwood when the Imp field goes to the post. Jack Hodgins, a conservative judge of horseflesh with a critical taste acquired through years of first hand information, "went the route" today. The Dixiana conditioner declared that "Sub Fleet is -the best horse I have trained." He added that he considers him "a different type of colt, and a better stayer, than was Spy Song." .Spy Song was himself second in the Derby, but Hodgins says he liked the first six furlongs the best, and was not easily rated. We" must say Sub Fleet is one of the cleanest limbed colts bidding for "Triple Crown" events. Charles T. Fisher plans giving him a chance at stud when he has finished racing. Fisher, incidentally, now has retired Heres Hoping and Astro, and they will be bred in 53. Heres Hoping won her finale in the Churchill Downs Handicap. Hodgins fancies Heres Hoping will add to her repute as a producer, but both he and Steve Brooks have a special affection for Four Winds. She had a kind of recurrent paralysis behind and could not race often, but handicapper Fred Burton rated her the best of her sex. Turfana: The success of Home-Made, by the Maryland sire, Occupy, in the fillies National Stallion, was the toast of the Maryland Breeders Association meeting here last evening. . . . Several Longchamp features are incorporated in plans for rebuilding Pimlico. . . . Right off the cob is this press box comment on Whither: "Whither - withered in the Withers." ... Calumet staff rates Bubbley a better prospect than was Real Delight at two, and a sounder one. . . . Track architect John Sloan bought Vaughn Flannerys painting of the old clubhouse here. Didnt believe the antebellum architecture. The Flannery painting the artist enjoyed doing most was his scene of Greentree mares, including Dabchick, in a moon-drenched paddock. "Hope sometime to do one of mares in the snow, about sunset, when the orange light accentuates their color," he observes. Degas is the artists favorite artist. . . . Janon Fisher is standing Tide Rips, runner-up in Phalanxs Belmont Stakes, at his Maryland farm. . . . The uprights of Pimlicos inside rail are painted green for practical as well as aesthetic purposes. Not only blend with the green of the inner field, but enable horsemen and patrons to observe horses action more easily than when they were painted red. . . . Pimlico, now in the Baltimore city limits, has perhaps the fastest stable refuse disposal program of any U. S. track. . . . D. A. Headley, breeder of Tom Fool, is % Preakness visitor. ... Imp is buried in the Hamburg Place horse cemetery.
