view raw text
Between Races I By Oscar Otis Young Tells Secrets of Derby Footing Caliente Helmets Precedent for Gassic Ebelhardt Rates Derby Field Superior CHURCHILL DOWNS Louisville Ky May 1 Well have the same track over which Dark Star beat Native Dancer Swaps beat Nashua and Needles his field last spring for this Kentucky Derby if they give us good weath ¬ er observes veteran track super ¬ intendent Tom Young But you are dead right when you say that Churchill Downs has changed and for the better in the last 10 years For during the last decades the principles of track care have be ¬ come more scientific and equip ¬ ment for working a track has greatly improved You yourself can recall when you first came to Churchill Downs that we used mules to pull our water wagons and with mule power we simply couldnt put as much water on the track between races as we needed And Im frank to admit that we have been fighting cuppiness in a race track and weve about got it licked Maybe 20 or 30 years ago cuppiness was taken for granted but most horsemen wont stand for this con ¬ dition any more and they are right in their stand Asked if the speed records set by any number of prob ¬ able starters in races leading up to the Derby forcast any record shattering in the Saturday classic Young replied Well if they do it will prove it a superior field because the track will be as I said the same as it has prevailed for the last few years This corner might add that the Derby strip in our opinion has speeded up about a second to the mile and a quarter maybe a trifle more since 10 seasons ago Citations year yearAnother Another First in Classics History HistorySaturdays Saturdays 83d running of the Derby will establish another precedent in the race in that it will be the first one ever run in which all jockeys will be wearing the Caliente safety helmet While state steward Lewis Finley tells us that under Kentucky law the use of the helmets is optional jockeys have been advised that the Kentucky authorities favor their use At Keeneland about 90 per cent of the riders used the helmets And when Willie Hartack was tossed over in Lexington on a horse called Bornastar and was kicked in the head and walked into the track hospital on his own power the case for the helmet was dramatically presented to the few remaining nonconformists Hartack credits the helmet with saving him from serious injury at the very least for as he described it It was like a rifle bullet when that hoof hit my helmet helmetAs As a matter of theoretical interest and because the Derby is so important we checked the possibility that some jockeys might wear the safety helmet which weighs about a pound more than the old fibre cap and some refuse to wear them thus giving the boys without the helmets an actual onepound weight ad ¬ vantage in the Derby If so it would have been the first Derby in history raced with a variation from the standard scale of 126 pounds a scale which has pre ¬ vailed unbroken since the 1920 running Of course the helmet is not weighed so the difference would be actual rather than shall we say legal and technical Now if weights mean anything in such a race as the Derby a pound could mean a lot We asked Jimmy Jones who is ounce conscious when it comes to horses and he said Well as far as I am cdncerned Id rather have the weight and the helmet than a jockey with the old fibre cap and the pound saved The safety factor is too great to ignore and Im sure a more confident rider wearing the helmet would more than make up for any single pound that a rider might try to save by risking his well being through choice of the fibre helmet In place after place the helmet is becoming mandatory equipment but Kentucky is gain ¬ ing its point in favoring its use through persuasion Next year we do not think there will be a fibre cap in use anywhere on this continent continentSpotted Spotted Gen Dukes Potential Early EarlyIt It is trite and maybe a trifle boring to repeat that Derby winners are made on the farm and nothing demonstrates the point better than the early appraisals of Gen Duke who this morning caused the Jones boys great concern by showing up with a sore hoof But at this writing they believe the colt has a 5050 chance to be a Derby starter Paul Ebelhardt Calumet Farm man ¬ ager tells us We all agreed that Gen Duke had possi ¬ bilities as a weanling and especially so as a yearling You can spot a good colts potential by his willingness to do just a bit more than you ask him and do it in a nice way Id compare colts to business executives If you see a tycoon who is under tension and pressure is inclined to be irrtable and wastes his time in petty things you wouldnt expect him to be as successful as the executive who takes strain and stress in stride Looking at it from this basis of comparison Gen Duke not only acted like one of the best Bull Leas we ever had at the farm but as a yearling during his training period was way ahead of the group groupAsked Asked to comment on time and posing some of the same questions we did to Tom Young Ebelhardt re ¬ plied Most of the horses going into the Derby have raced in fast times this winter and spring I am willing to concede that some but by no means all of this record shattering has been due to faster and maybe even improved race tracks But I think a considerable considerableContinued Continued on Pag ForiyThrea BETWEEN RACES RACESBy By OSCAR OTIS Continued from Page Five Fiveshare share of credit is due to the fact that the American breed of thoroughbred is im ¬ proving If the breed wasnt improving there would be little point in the program of a farm such as Calumet is following We of course tend to breed our best mares to our top sires and while this is onebf the secrets of Calumets success such a program can also tend to be self defeating if a farm becomes saturated with its own blood Therefore we are always on the lookout for outcrosses and Iron Liege is a good example of such a search searchHenry Henry Knight found Iron Maiden dam of Iron Liege in California for us and he knew we were looking for a War Admiral mare of certain minimum standards Iron Maiden is of course the dam of Iron Re ¬ ward in turn the dam of Swaps The dam of Gen Duke is Wistful our first winner of the filly triple crown Both Gen Duke and Iron Liege appear to bear out the theory that when you outcross a top mare to a top sire the percentage chances are good that the offspring will be a better race horse than the matron no matter how good the dam may have been A good example was that MarkYeWell was bet ¬ ter than MarKell I might add that such a selective breeding program is by no means confined to Calumet Farm and I feel this years Derby field is one of ex ¬ ceptional quality If so it will be another proof that the breed in America actually is making progress that times are still made to be broken and brilliant perform ¬ ances will stand only until such time as even better thoroughbreds come along and come along they will or else we have been badly fooled by our intensive efforts and thought at Calumet to try for improve ¬ ment
