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h New England By Fred Galiani Tiny Krovitz Recalls Riding at 126 Carried 32 Pounds of Lead in Saddle Woody Sedlacek,SueMcDonald Wed NARRAGANSETT PARK, Paw tucket, R. I., June 18. The Lighter Side: Back in 1939, Harry Krovitz who is now a pa trol judge in New England, was an apprentice rider and one of the lightest ever to get on a horse around these parts. He was a throwback to the days Ed Boss rode at 75 to 85 pounds, although at present he looks like a watch charm guard on a football team. His weight was given out as being ueuig if 94 pounds, puuuub, but uut h as being ueuig if 94 pounds, puuuub, but uut all who remember him shave a few points off and put it down in the low 80s. One afternoon a trainer at this track put Krovitz on a horse called Offender, who has just started a successful winning streak. Harry says he weighed 94 pounds, and the horse had to carry 126. "We used every piece of lead in the jockeys room to make the 1926," reminisces Harry. "When we go to the paddock and the valet threw the saddle on Offender, the horse actually grunted and you could see his back appear to cave slightly. The track was as deep in mud as it could get, and with all that dead weight on his back, Offender, who was the favorite, wound up out of the money. "But that wasnt all. "When I came back after the race I reached up and grabbed the saddle. It was so heavy it knocked me right on my back in the mud. I couldnt get up. I just lay there-with it on my chest, sinking deeper in the mud in front of all those people, before my valet rushed over and got me up." .While Harry was taking the mud bath, his agent was fleeing from the irate trainer, and went into seclusion for a couple of days. It seems he had told the trainer Harry could do 117 pounds and would only have to carry nine pounds dead weight. Offender was the , perfectly named horse for that fiasco. Everybody involved was offended. The other day here, Bob Duffy, a jocks valet who could easily make 112 pounds, put some water softener into a bucket in which he intended to clean some tack. The Softener turned the aqua into a dark green. He left it for a couple of minutes to attend to some other duties. That was a mistake. When he came back to lift the bucket, his arm was nearly pulled out of its socket. While Duffy was engaged elsewhere someone had put 45 pounds of lead weights into the bucket, which was undetected because of the dark green covering. Of course, we wouldnt reveal who did it, but it was one of the jockeys . . . Talking of jocks and valets, one night at Scarborough Downs, the paddock judge ordered "rider up" and one of the trainers possibly farsighted attempted to put the valet in the saddle. Who knows? He may have been the better rider. last year jockey Joe Tamburello revealed a new way to lose a race. Coming down the stretch he was on a horse that had winner written all over .him, when suddenly the jock felt his pants falling. Modesty got the best of him and rather than be embarrassed before the large crowd, he gave up riding and reached back to hold up his pants. It was in vain anyway. As soon as he passed .the finish line and stood up in his saddle, they fell down around his knees. Figure men who take wind velocity, atmospheric pressure and the like into consideration when they make their calculations, can at least be thankful they dont have to handicap at some of the foreign tracks. Like Cuxhaven, Germany, where Johnny Sullivan, who has the job of decoding this for the teletype, spent many a day during his service tenure. "The back-stretch of the track was on a beach," says Johnny, "which was fine, until the tide rolled in. Then you had to find out what horses were the best swimmers. They would run like the wind on the home stretch, then all bog down as they had to struggle through the waves on the backside. Threw the figures all off." Well if you at least could see them running down the back-stretch, it probably would appeal to a lot of players more than the hidden Widener Course. Getting back to the present, the big word around the track this morning was that trainer Woody Sedlacek was married yesterday to Sue McDonald and the couple are now honeymooning in New York ... Trainer T. P. Morgan is ex- Contlnued on Page Fifty-Eight New England JJ By FRED GALIANI Continued from Page Seven pec ted to snip four more of his horses to Stanley Greene, who is handling the Texans stock in New England, for the Rockingham meet . . . Nick Ferrara, 20-year-old bug rider from Camden, N. J., arrived from New York and joined the jocks colony. He is under contract to E. R. Rey and was accompanied by his agent, Fred Derosa. At the start of the New England season, usually a happy hunting grounds for apprentices, there were very few on hand. The number has risen rapidly through this session and there are ax number of likely prospects present. Two who debuted at this meeting and have shown promise are Johnny Raia, and Lucien Parent. Both boys, who are just starting, look good on a horse. Parent, as a matter of fact, won his first race Friday on his fifteenth attempt. He managed to hold Ducat together to win by a nose and gave all the appearances of. a veteran as he refused to become rattled and turned in a top performance. Mr. and Mrs. S. P. Steckler,of New York, arrived for the week end to inspect the string of horses that have been campaigning here under the direction of John Miele . . . Jim OBrey is miffed at the patrol judges. The stable area here is directly across from the stands at this track. The other day he was coming from the barn and asked the judges for a lift to the front side in their official station wagon. He was given the brush, which only fazed him for a couple of minutes . . . There have been 25 claims at the meeting so far with Dick Posey paying out the largest sum, ,500 for Niringo. This was the horse once owned by the Scripps-Howards Joe Williams. At least Niringo won for the writer, which was more than pan be said for Pounditout, who was the property of the whole sports department of the New York World-Telegram. In their case, property was liability.
