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. - Monmouth Memos By FRED GALIANI Aussie Trainer Visits U.S. Tracks Tommy Smith Has Excellent Record Gives Impressions of Sport Here MONMOUTH PARK, Oceanport, N. J., June 23. — Saddling 55 winners in a season is good training in any country, which is why Tommy " s " young --- Smith was the leading conditioner in Australia for the last season. The figure becomes all the more impressive when it is realized that H, there is racing only one day a week "Down Under," and then only eight races a day. Smith, a curley-haired cheerful, 36-year-old, chap, is making a brief tour of American race tracks and breeding farms before returning to Australia. The Australian year, as far as racing is considered, runs from August to August and, actually, Smith had close to 90 winners last season, but only those won at tracks within a radius of 20 miles of Sydney are considered in the metropolitan standings. Over the Easter holiday, he won nine races in three days, including the Doncaster Handicap and the Jockey Club St. Leger. Having visited Belmont and Aqueduct last week, the young Australian made Monmouth his next stop and was discussing: the impressions* he received in his stay here. "Actually," he said, "its good to get around because you see how very similar our racing and yours are. It is pretty much the same. Some of pur tracks use the starting gate, film patrol and other such innovations, and there is a! constant adoption of American ideas. The few different things I noticed here that would not be permitted home are allowing a horse to race in blinkers, and to be shod with caulks. Those are not permitted in Australia. "Our tracks are pretty much the same as yours, they being all circular courses, although they are a mile and a quarter or more. Belmont would be the closest to them. Before the war, we had races four times a week, but now we are down to just once and an occasional holiday." Just then a tremendous rain storm broke over the track,, the downpour turning the track to mud. "If it rains like this at home, especially in the morning, the races are called off and held on a Wednesday. There wouldnt be too many people at the track anyway. Most of them would stay home and bet by telephone." All Australian racing i§ held over -the turf courses, but yesterday there wasnt an event carded on the grass for Smith to observe. "At Randwick," he went on, "we have five courses, the course proper, the A course, the B course, steeplechase course, and a little B course. These courses are used for training, although we are allowed to gallop on the course proper, where the races are held, before a big meeting, like the cups. We train most of our horses over tanbark. Probably the most striking feature of American racing to Smith was the fact that each track supplied stable accommodations for the horsemen. "You mean to say," he asked with surprise, "that the club puts up all these stables? Back home a trainer is responsible for the care of his horses at all times, and that means that he must have stalls of his own, or leased somewhere where the horses are brought to the track, from his own stables for the races and it is not uncommon on race day in Sydney to see a groom leading a horse to the track through the very streets. And when you move to the next track, you get stalls there too, thats novel." While he was at Belmont, Smith went over to look at Native Dancer and when he was asked how the horse looked to him, he replied, "Hes a powerful horse. Id say hes the equal to anything Ive ever seen. Id have liked to have seen him run." The conversation got around to the way racing is a form of life "Down Under" and Smith stated that the whole country stopped dead on Melbourne Cup day. "Almost everyone who can get there goes to the races, and throughout the rest of the country everyone awaits the result. When the race is on, the trams stop and everybody piles -out to listen to the broadcast; all the stores, if they are not closed, have wireless set up. In the back country, they stop shearing sheep to hear the race; the Continued on Page Thirty-Nine Monmouth Memos By FRED GALIANI Continued from Page Fire same thing down in the mines. The Melbourne Cup is a must for everyone." Smith, who has been training for nine years, when he stopped riding, obviously enjoyed his day at the races in New Jersey and mentioned that it would be nice to race a horse in the U. S., but that was up j to the owners for whom he campaigns. jThe Laurel International was discussed briefly with him and the officials of that Maryland track might do well to check the ■record of Smiths mare, Tarien, who won ; the Doncaster. Handicap and has raced a : few times against Hydrogen, Australias leading horse of the moment. Smith is on his way to Lexington, Ky., where he will be shown some breeding farms and look over the former Australian stallions, Shannon II., Royal Gem n., and Bernborough, who are now in stud there. From there he will proceed home and get ready for the big cup meetings coming up in October, their spring. I
