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Between Races — By Oscar Otis Swaps Conditioned by Arizona Method Will Wear Human Shoe in Derby Run Tenney Explains Reasons for Routine CHURCHILL DOWNS, Louisville, Ky., May 6.— Never before in Kentucky Derby history has a horse quite like Swaps been a starter and strong contender .as well. If only for the fact that he will be wearing a genuine womans shoe on his left front foot as a supplement to his regular shoe he would be newsworthy, but that is just one part of the story. His trainer, Arizona horseman Mickey Tenney, has given the colt a training routine the like of which has been at once amazing and enlightening to the staid midwesterners and easterners. For Tenney is training Ari zona style, and, if the opening-day run of Swaps in 1:10%, working out a mile in 1:36 and some small change is any indication, this horse is a runner. Tenney refuses to sleep in a downtown hotel, even goes further and refuses to sleep in a tack room. He sleeps in a stall just next to that occupied by Swaps, putting down his cattle range type sleeping gear on the straw. In this manner, he can sleep with one eye open, is alert every time that Swaps might roll. Now about this shoe. It is the most amazing device ever seen by this writer in his long experience in racing; But it must work, for we learn that Swaps wore it in his sizzling run inaugural day. Tenney invited us into the stall to take a close look — and we have been the only "outsider" to be in that stall since Swaps arrival in Louisville. Tenney lifted up the foot and explained: "Now, you see that injury? It was sidewise in the heel, and went into the frog. He got that at Santa Anita. Thats what delayed his-training for the Santa Anita Derby, a race he won even though he ran as a short horse. Well, weve had these things happen in Arizona, sometimes with nails. Anyway, we wanted to at once cure the injury and not lose the use of our horse. And in Arizona we had learned a way to do just that. So, we scraped the injury through to the blood, took out some pus, and then gave the horse a boot to keep out the dirt and give him something to race on. Takes Pressure Off Injured Foot "Now, there is just one substance which is ideal for such a case as this, the sole leather used in womens shoes. It is extremely thin, but also extremely tough. So we carved him out a shoe just like a person would wear, tied it into the regular shoe, and, for a race, we tape it around the outside, just to keep everything in place right. Inside the wound, we have it packed with a formula which will bring about the cure — in time. In the meantime, our horse is racing at his best. We cant let a little thing like that stop us any more than a cowboy on the desert could let something like this deprive him of his horse. It really isnt anything new — in Arizona. And it invariably works." We did gaze in awe upon the improvised shoe, with the leather pad covering the ENTIRE bottom of Swaps foot. Swaps, in all his racing and workouts, has never been cooled out on a tow ring, and, except for a dab of a sponge here and there only on rare, occasions, has he ever been rubbed down. Swaps is cooled out on his way from the race track, being ridden hither and thither, there and yon. When he gets backs to the stall, he is ready to be stowed away for the day.* "The English way?" we asked Tenney. "No, the Arizona way," replied the man, for whom, by the way, we have the deepest respect as a fine man and a wonderful horseman. "Now you take that horse over there," Tenney added, as he pointed to a horse being rubbed down. "Watch him try to kick. Every time he gets nervous, he is yanked on the head, gently, but still yanked. You have heard a lot about our training methods as not pampering our horses. I say just the opposite, we dont annoy them. Trainers Views on Conditioning Horses "Many people dont understand horses, in the first place. In his "relationship to man, the horse has been historically and in fact a utile animal or a beast of burden. I do not- believe he basically likes to do the work required of him by man, but would rather be in his natural state, eating a lot and leading his own life. Theref6re, the training of a horse to conform to mans ways should approximate the nature of the horse as much as possible. Horses learn by experience what man requires of them, and in gaining that ! experience Ive never seen anyone improve on what I call the Arizona method where a horse is -treated as a horse, with affection, to be sure, but without what , Arizonans consider a lot of nonsense added in." A tremendous amount of weight can be attached I to Tenneys remarks, for he and his boss, Rex Ells- worth, have made good as breeders and operators of i a racing" stable starting with about ,000 and ending up, at current estimate, with more than two million dollars capital in horses and land. The horses j not only paid their own way, they earned the rest-Ellsworth did not make it in cattle, a sideline operation, but in thoroughbreds. Therefore, the Tenney remarks are apt to carry more weight than the man who started with a million or two and worked himself down to the ,000.
