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ON THE WIRE By Huqh J McGuire I ASCOT PARK Cuyahoga Falls Ohio May 8 We will risk the chance of being accused of writing too much on the current weather conditions in this area This is the major topic of conver ¬ sation here and all di ¬ visions of the track operation have been vitally concerned par ¬ ticularly as a suspen ¬ sion of racing had been considered Through ¬ out the entire length of the difficulties and for much longer than any other individual the most harassed man concerned has been track superintendent Leonard Utterback Utterback has been on this job for 10 years and without hesitation he names the cur ¬ rent situation the worst he has been comr pelled to face He dates his troubles back to March 1 when this entire area found itself under a heavy blanket of snow and he relates that since that time the track has never had an opportunity to fully dry out as one rainfall succeeded another in quick succession successionA A A A AUtterback Utterback found himself compelled to thaw out the pipes in the stable area with a blowtorch as horses who had been wintered on various farms moved in to the track barns on March 15 To give these horses a chance to get in some training he permitted them on the track that was un ¬ prepared for constant pounding and on this Utterback places the cause of most of his trouble He was unable to foresee that the rainy period would be so persistent By the very construction of this sixfurlong track the section of the oval past the fin ¬ ish line and to the first turn received three times the amount of pounding as did the rest of the track A section of this por ¬ tion of the track crumpled under the over ¬ load and an area about 20 feet square too big to be called a hole softened up This is where almost all of the spills have oc ¬ curred Utterback and a crew of 14 track men worked constantly on the track night and day but their efforts were thwarted as rain continued to undue the results of their toil toilA A A A AThroughout Throughout the entire period Utterback could be found riding the floats himself and supervising the work of his men He maintains that there is nothing wrong with the drainage system which could handle Utterback Explains Poor Footing Chuck Bank Busy Race Announcer Gail Parker Top Rider at Meet normal conditions He explained that he had been flooded with suggestions but re ¬ ceived no cooperation from nature Utter backs affiliation with racing comes through normal channels He is the son of the late Ernest Utterback a wellknown trainer who died in 1921 The elder Utter back made his home in Maryland but trav ¬ eled to all parts of the country with his horses which he owned and trained for himself It was his horse Royal Onyx who won the first race run over the Laurel track Two brothers Harry and Dick sire also in racing serving mostly as stable foremen Leonard himself took out his first trainers license in New Orleans in 1925 With his wife he lives in a house on the Ascot track grounds but hasnt been in it too much lately latelyA A A A AThe The man you are most likely to hear announcing races in the northern Ohio area is Chuck Bang who has been at this job since 1938 Last year Chuck had his biggest season between April 17 when As ¬ cot Park opened and October 31 the closing date of ThistleDown Here were 255 racing days and nights and Bang has it all figured out that with an average of nine races each day or night he calls 2295 contests The fields in these races averaged eight horses which meant the memoriza ¬ tion of the racing silks by which races are called of 18360 horses As the running positions are called about five times in each race the whole thing totals to an awful lot of talk in a very short period and we can hardly visualize what this total would reach were Bang busy throughout the entire year Bang is the voice at Ascot Cranwood Randall ThistleDown and the harness races at Painesville and Grand view He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and formerly wrote sports for Detroit and Cleveland papers He has also done publicity work and turns out free ¬ lance writing when racing is not in season in this area Bang was named Ohios racing man of the year for 1952 by the Ohio Racing Fans Association He is married and has a daughter Stephanie StephanieA A A A AIt It came as something of an amazing revelation to us to learn that to date this year find despite t the continuqus bad w weather that has plagued this track the mutuel handle has been about bn a par with that of last year We havent the exact figures at hand just now but general manager Dan Cronin told us that going into the Saturday program there was very little difference between the two seasons This could be explained in several ways Those who attended could wager more per capita the hardy players who braved the weather conditions were always the real backbone of the mutuel handle and cer ¬ tainly did not include many sightseers Given good weather Ascot Park would have had wagering that would have broken all records in connection with financial fig ¬ ures for this track we were interested to learn that last year the association dis ¬ tributed in purse money 5085 per cent of its mutuel take among the horsemen a figure that places this sixfurlong oval among the leaders percentagewise of the country countryA A A A AEvery Every race meeting has its leading rider and here it is Gail Parker the lad who hails from Rexburgh Idaho which we be ¬ lieve is the home of a couple of other jockeys who found considerable success in their profession We refer to Wayne Wright and Earl Sande Parker rides at about 112 pounds and is free lancing He was among the leading riders here last year also but at that time he was affiliated with the stable of Pete Maxwell which led the list of winning owners Maxwell and Parker came to a parting of the ways but this season both of them are leading their re ¬ spective divisions Parkers accomplish ¬ ments at this meeting include riding four consecutive winners in one day and bring ¬ ing home three winners on each of three other days Last year he was leading rider at Wheeling and during the year he was first home on 149 winners although he spent no less than 71 days on the ground due to suspensions In all cases these rul ¬ ings came as a result of Parkers over enthusiasm to win races One year at Santa Anita he finished as second leading apprentice to no less a personage than Willie Shoemaker To date at Ascot he has piloted 37 winners in 21 days daysA A A A AIn In Brief Andy J Cunningham who serves here as placing judge is one of the few ofifcials licensed for both thorough ¬ bred and standardbred racing Cunning ¬ ham has served in his local post for four years and can also be heard over the public publicContinued Continued on Poge FortyOne V v v ivTfc I 10 QN THE WIRE WIREBy By HUGH 3 McGUIRE Continued from Page Four Fouraddress address systems at Laurel and Baltimore Raceways in Maryland When veteran jockey Lou Pikor was tossed from a stum ¬ bling mount here the other day he took the fall almost as though it had been re ¬ hearsed and was on his feet at once Pikor is an example of the older school of riders who take such spills in stride It wasnt the first time we had seen him go down Kenneth Brinkley who is well up on the list of leading riders here is under contract to Pete Maxwell leading trainer Veteran jockey Freddy Kratz has lost none of the skill that perenially finds him well placed in the list of leading riders Another in the same class is Stanley Austin At the time of writing on Saturday morning we are getting one of the infrequent glimpses at the sun There is no guarantee how long this condition will continue
