view raw text
STICK TO ORIGINAL PLAN Pacific Coast Jockey Club Decides Against Open Meeting. Only Invited Horsemen to Be Permitted to Jlaec at Tanforan Grandstand to Cost 25,000. SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., November 21. Two important changes have been made in the plans of the Pacific Coast Jockey Club, which owns the Tanforan race course. The sport will not be open to all horsemen, but will be purely invitational. This is a reversion to the first announcement of six months ago. With the coming of racing secretary "Bob" Leighton from the North, for awhile it looked as though the bars had been let down. He planned to liave "barns" built for the accommodation of one-horse owners even. All that seems now to be in the discard. One change has come for the better, however, in the decision of the directors to have a 25,000 grandstand, instead of a structure to cost only 5,000. President A. B. Spreck-els policy is to have everything of the best at the new plant, and the grandstand at the lower figure planned several weeks ago did not harmonize with his ideas. The racing secretary has a big problem to provide interesting sport from the .comparatively small number of horses to be furnished by the strings of the directors of the Jockey Club and men and women to be invited by the directors to participate. Up to this time the only invitation has been extended to J. W. Marchbank. The California breeders sixteen youngsters two two-year-olds and fourteen yearlings have been at the San Bruno course since last month, when they arrived from Saratoga. The A. B. Spreckels coming two-year-olds, fourteen in number, are coming along well at Pleasanton, across the bay from Tanforan. Probably a portion of the string will be raced at the peninsula track when it opens. Herbert Fleishackers string of three Leloba, The Hottentot and one other are resting up at A. K. Macombers Miramonte track, San Jose, following their New York campaign. The Macomber stable, which was handled by "Charley" Boots on the metropolitan circuit, also is in winter quarters at the San Jose course. Half a dozen youngsters, bred by vice-prudent Rudolph Spreckels at Elm-wood StockFarm, Milpitas, are at San Jose, as are two or three belonging to Howard Spreckels, son of the vice-president, and himself secretary of the Jockey Club. The fine string of director Frank J. Kelley will help out materially in the sport. Much interest has been aroused here in the coming of the horses of the Chicago man of affairs. Directors Thomas Fortune Ryan and C. K. G. Billings have made no announcement of intending to race. To assist racing secretary Leighton in his perplexing problem of making a success of the first invitational race meeting on a large scale for a comparatively long meeting to be attempted out this way Mr. Boots is preparing to conduct a public stable that he confidently figures will contain forty or fifty horses. These horses will be owned by men and women invited by the directors of the Jockey Club to take part in the sport.
