The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1892-04-14
STARTING RUNNING RACES.
An Eastern Man Opens the Eyes Of
California Jockeys.
Starter Ferguson's Methods-His First
Days Work on This Coast and
Its Good Results.

Out of five thousand men watching the
efforts of the man with the red flag to get
a field of colts started, probably nine
tenths of them are at a loss to understand
why it is that any man cannot get the
horses off promptly and on fairly
even terms; and probably any one
of this number would not hesitate, il
invited to do SO, to get down on the track
and show the multitude how easily it can
be done.
And, despite the fact that there are very
few good starters, it really does seem as
if there is nothing difficult in the task.
Racing associations, however, have much
trouble in finding good starters, and men
like Caldwell receive from $50 to 500 a
day for their services at the big Eastern
meetings.
The Blood-Horse Association of San
Francisco evidently did wise thing re-
Gently in sending East for Ferguson, one
of the best of modern starters. Referring
to his first appearance, on Tuesday, the
ErdDainer says:
ut takes more highly concentrated
business sense to start a field of race
horses than it does to breed them. There
are breeders and breeders, but when you
guson the list of really irst-class starters
in the United States is complete. Fer
guson got here Monday night and showed
up at the Bay District yesterday after
noon, and it took him just four minutes
to show lot of obstreperous jockeys that
he had not come . 800 miles for fun.
Ferguson has his own peculiar way
of getting horses under way. HI does not
get out in the middle of the track and mix
with the horses. He has little portable
platform about as high as the rail which
he sets down inside the fence. Mounted
upon the platform, he has the horses and
jockeys right under his eye, and when he
drops his flag he does not have to run for
his life to escape the flying hoofs.
"Ferguson's personality is short slen-
der, and unassuming, but his voice is
large enough for two men, and he snaps
his orders out In a tone that is loaded
with all sorts of punishments that lock-
eys fear. With his first field Ferguson
saluted the silk-wearers with something
like this: Now, boys, Pm here to get
these horses off. / don't want any
foolishness. When l say come up,
you come the first time / tell you; the
second time its fifty, and if l have to say
1T the third you go on the ground for the
meeting. Now, take your places
There We're ten horses in that first
field, and the start for a mile was in front
of the stand. The lads swang into place,
balanced about tor about pair of min
utes, and before they had begun to think
about starting the flag was down and
they were oil. 1t was a bit scattering,
with one horse out in front, but it inn
pressed the jockeys with the fact that
they were not working by the hour, and
that Ferguson was not in California for
his health.
1T took seventeen minutes to start
twelve three-year-olds from the quarter
post, but one of them was sullly and
would not break, else they would have
got away at the first move. Ferguson
waited on the sulky horse and finally sent
them off in bunch, with the unwilling
brute among them.
The three starts in a heat race with
four horses on was like. rolling off log
with him. One turn, one balance-all, and
then they went Oft with daylight showing
nowhere.
But the smoothest thing of the day
was the send-otf in the two-year- old race.
They started from the half-miIe pole, the
hardest place on the track. Eleven skit-
fish and half-green youngsters went over
there and the crowd settled itself for a
long wait. Ferguson banded them at the
post, turned them back down the stretch,
turned them again forty yards away and
yelled Come on They turned and
swung up to the flag like a cavalcade and
swept by the post IL an unbroken bunch,
off at the first attempt. 1t took an hour
to START the same crowd Saturday.
"Ferguson's hired man, coffee-colored
Kentuckian who has been whipper-in
ever since Ferguson began to handle the
is to get the horses in line, and he does it,
giving orders with some of the starter S
directness. Ferguson owes something to
the way he has trained his man."