Weighing In: Evening Out Settles Argument in Her Own Favor Widener Filly May be Best Juvenile of Season, Daily Racing Form, 1953-08-17

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WEIGHING IN y EVAN shipman SARATOGA, Saratoga Springs, N. Y., Aug. 15. Evening Out settled the argument as to who is the best of our two-year-old fillies yesterday when she romped home the easiest kind of winner in the Schuylerville Stakes, her time the fastest of the meeting. Until yesterday, Evening Out was thought to have a serious rival for honors in her division in Maine Chance Farms lovely daughter of the young sire, Mr. Busher, Incidentally, but Incidentally, after running with Evening Out for a half mile, was forced to concede the issue, even losing the place to Brookmeades Riant. All through the stretch, jockey Ovie Scurlock was sitting perfectly still on the winner, and one had the impression that .even during the first half mile, when Evening Out and Incidentally were running side by side, George D. Wideners homebred filly was merely tolerating the others presence. In several of her earlier races, Incidentally had shown a tendency to bear out on the turns, but the roan miss ran perfectly true in this renewal of the Schuylerville, and no excuse can" be invoked for her defeat. Riant, another who was confidently expected to show well, stumbled leaving the gate. She recovered quickly however, and made something of a bid at the quarter pole, but she was just not good enough, even though she was in receipt of four pounds from the winner. AAA Less striking to the eye than the flashy roan Incidentally, Evening Out is nevertheless impressive when seen close up in the paddock. She is a good sized and well furnished brown by Shut Out from the Eight Thirty mare. Evening Belle, and the resemblance, we fancy, is to her sires side of the house rather than to her dams.- She has a goyad, although it is a little on the plain Evening Out Settles Argument in Her Own Favor Widener Filly May Be Best Juvenile of Season Combat Boots Welcomes Absence of Champion French Rider Shows Himself a Master of Pace side with the nose slightly Roman, and the eye is -large and intelligent. Her legs are perfectly clean, and when seen in action, her gait is bold and pure. She has never been asked to go more distance than the five and a half furlongs of yesterdays test, but her conformation, her way of going and her total individuality make it almost certain that a route will hold no terrors for Evening Out, an opinion that study of her fine pedigree only confirms. From the time of her debut in the Fashion Stakes at Belmont Park, we have been particularly "high" on Evening Out, and it is no trouble at all for us to say that she is the best two-year-old of either sex that we have seen so far this season, and she is also the best filly to carry her breeders popular colors since the redoubtable High Fleet, heroine of the Coaching Club American Oaks and other filly fixtures back in the mid-thirties. AAA Out three times this season, Evening Out has now scored three victories, each of them a stake. At Belmont, she was hard put to it to defeat Incidentallys stablemate, Fascinator, and a line through Fascinator led some horsemen to believe that Incidentally would beat the Widener miss. We never shared this opinion, our explanation of the close call with Fascinator being that Evening Out was a rather "cold" filly, doing what she had to do and little more. We also are inclined to think that she shows a lot less in the morning than she does in real competition in the afternoon, and it is possible that her victorious debut in the Fashion was as much of a surprise to her connections as it was to the public that allowed her to start at the generous odds of 17 to 1. She was merely a name as far as we were concerned until we spotted her on the walking ring that day last spring, but we have been in Evening Outs corner ever since, nor do we have the slightest anxiety as to her letting us down. AAA You may recall that when Tom Fool added the Wilson Mile and the Whitney Stakes to his imposing list of trophies, he had as "sparring partners" first Alfred Van-derbilts Indian Land and then Putnam Stables Combat Boots. Indian Land made no pretense of a fight for it, Eric Guerin galloping him along under almost as tight a hold as Ted Atkinson had on the champion, but a little while later, Combat Boots did show a real effort, the Whitney looking like a race until Ted decided to administer the coup de grace at the three-eighths pole. Yesterday, with no Tom Fool to humiliate him, Combat Boots was the easiest kind of winner in a nine furlong allowance affair, the conditions being extremely generous to the good Our Boots five-year-old in permitting him to start with 113 pounds up, only three more than was carried by Ogden Phipps rather modest three-year-old Bassanio, and equal weight with the once formidable Royal Governor, not at all what he used to be. There was literally nothing to it as Combat Boots, starting at a little less than 1 to 2, toyed with his opposition, the mile and an eighth accomplished in 1:52 over the deep strip. There is little doubt that the winner could have scored in sensibly faster time, had that been necessary, but if he had been running against Tom Fool, the great horse would have left the good one up the track whether the Continued on Page Forty-Three I WEIGHING IN By EVAN SHIPMAN Continued from Page Fifty-Two watch showed 1:50 for the nine furlongs or 1:55. That is what we mean bythe word class. AAA Picking up top weight of 150 pounds, Allison Sterns steadily improving hurdler, War Rhodes, captured a handicap for this division, one of the more interesting events on yesterdays program, and because of his rider, Albert Foots artistry, it is hard to tell just how good this gelding is right now. Top weight or no, Foot took War Rhodes right to the front in this mile and three-quarters race, and he stayed in front every step of the way. Passing the stand the first time round, it was evident that Foot was setting just the kind of pace he wanted, and you may believe us that this was a very pretty job of rating, leaving War Rhodes plenty of energy to withstand the inevitable challenge in the final quarter mile. Pat Smithwick made this bid with King Commander, passing War Rhodes stablemate, Knocks Twice, but never forcing Foot to do more than let but another wrap. The time was about six seconds off Semper Eadems track record, but it is no indication of what War Rhodes might have shown had he forced someone elses pace instead of making his own. There are riders who look better in the saddle than this highly talented French boy, but there seems to be none over here who have quite Foots sense of pace, nor his ready adaptability to different types of horses; it has always been a pleasure for us to watch him in action.


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1950s/drf1953081701/drf1953081701_53_3
Local Identifier: drf1953081701_53_3
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800