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WEIGHING By Evan Shipman BELMONT PARK Elmont L I N Y May 6 For the stables firsttaste of clas ¬ sic honors since the days of Count Fleet Mrs John Hertz homebred filly Happy Mood shared a victory with King Ranchs Riverina in yesterdays running of the Acorn S t a kes A m e r i c as equivalent of the New ¬ market One Thousand Guineas and Long champs Poule des Pro duits des Pouliches All through the stretch it looked as if Happy Mood a daughter of Mahmoud La Reigh by Count Gallahad would score with some ¬ thing to spare but in the long drive Willie Boland managed to bring King Ranchs bay Princequillo filly up level with Mrs Hertz chestnut and the judges were un ¬ able to separate the pair at the wire wireA A A A v vRun Run in a very moderate 138 this Acorn was far from an impressive race and it seems to us that the winners merit only tepid praise while back of them no performance calls for any indulgence with the exception of that of the favored Fas ¬ cinator she obviously crowding her excel ¬ lent effort in last Fridays Kentucky Oaks far too closely for her own benefit Happy Mood strangely enough is not a nominee for the Coaching Club American Oaks so that this ones stamina will not be ques ¬ tioned immediately but Riverina is a can ¬ didate for the mile and threeeighths stake for which the Acorn is a customary dress rehearsal Max Hirschs charge should look even better in the longer race than she did yesterday both her style and her bloodlines suggesting a route Sired by the cup horse Princequillo Riverina is from the War Admiral matron Bee Mac a good stake winner in her own right for King Ranch and already prominent as the dam of the classy but erratic Better Self SelfA A A A AIn Av v In the strict interpretation of the term America has no classic races but there I are events that by more or less common consent are generally so referred to A classic race is first of all an event for threeyearold thoroughbreds for which nominations are made at the time of foal ¬ ing and these events are contested at scale weights In England the country from which of course all other countries Acorn Far From Impressive Race Oaks Winner Crowds Her Starts Owners Give Dancer His Prep borrow the term the classics are the mile Two Thousand Guineas for colts the mile One Thousand Guineas for fillies the Epsom Oaks for fillies and the Epsom Derby both at a mile and a half and finally the Doncaster St Leger at a mile and threequarters No other English race for the age is ranked higher than a semi classic In this country the time of foal ¬ ing clause disqualifies all the stakes that might otherwise fit the definition We feel that the term is not being stretched too far when we call classics the Acorn the Coaching Club American Oaks the Ken ¬ tucky Derby the Preakness and the Bel ¬ mont Stakes Maybe the whole matter of classics or nonclassics is not very im ¬ portant but it offers a handy term of reference once everybody agrees on exactly what it means meansA A A A APutting Putting local pride to one side one must admit that the field in the Kentucky Oaks last Friday was more appealing from every point of view than the band that disputed the Acorn here yesterday It is all very well that the winner of the Blue Grass fixture was well trounced in the Acorn the short interval of only four days between the races together with the shipping by plane is explanation enough for Fascinators de ¬ feat even though her jockey Eddie Arcaro maintained that she did not like the Bel ¬ mont strip She liked it well enough last season and she liked it well enough yes day to go to the front at the quarter pole but when the others challenged the good looking War Jeep filly was simply at the end of her resources Her appearance is much finer this season that it was last Fascinator being definitely on the rough side as a juvenile As she takes on matur ¬ ity her lines are far less awkward than they were and she will eventually be a very handsome big mare As for the others they looked either overtrained or over raced or else they showed plainly enough why they had not been overraced Al ¬ ways excepting the champion Evening Out this is not a good year for fillies Finding seven owners willing to pit their horses against Native Dancer at allowance conditions is a tribute to the sportsman ¬ ship rather than the temerity of the group As late as yesterday afternoon hardly anybody at Belmont dared hope that tomorrows Colin Purse the race that will bring Alfred Vanderbilts gray cham ¬ pion back to competition had a chance in the world of filling satisfactorily but here the entries are and it is going to be a well furnished field after all Native Dancer fit and sound has been working brilliantly in the morning but he will cer ¬ tainly benefit from this outing calculated to send him out for the important Metro ¬ politan Handicap a week from Saturday at razor edge Thanks to television and thanks to his own great merit Native Dancer is better known to the general pub ¬ lic than any other thoroughbred past or present and we are sure that the word he is to start will bring out thousands to ¬ morrow who until receiving the news had no thought of visiting the track They may rest confident that trainer Bill Win ¬ frey will send his charge out in trim to do full justice to himself and to their expec ¬ tations Native Dancer is the big horse now and every opportunity we get to watch him run will be appreciated Morning observers of the Irish and Eng ¬ lish steeplechasers flown here recently to compete in Saturdays interesting Inter nation tell us that these horses take their hedges in the Liverpool manner jumping very big but appearing to drop in contrast to the more flowing style of American and French chasers We have little fear of any bf the English or Irish entries failing to get the course on the week end but we do rather wonder as to how they will match the swift pace of American competitors such as The Mast and Sundowner Years ago when we fol ¬ lowed this branch of the sport in France the horses who shipped across the channel in quest of the rich Parisian stakes were few and far between and with the ex ¬ ception of the great Easter Hero those who did risk the trip were at a marked disad ¬ vantage due to their style Easter Hero who wound up the property of our own Jock Whitney could do just about any ¬ thing and he was as superior to his French contemporaries at Auteuil as he had pre ¬ viously proved to ordinary opposition at Cheltenham and Aintree What a boom to the steeplechasing sport both here and abroad another Easter Hero would be
