Arizona republican., 1903-02-24
AUTOMOBILE MEETING
Races Will Be Run Over Today, No
 Charge For Admission.

The automobile tournament yester- day is generally admitted to have been a failure and there was a universal eX- precision of disappointment by the large number in attendance, for it was in reality the largest gathering of people at the driving park for a long time. They expected to not only see some good racing, but races of a novel na- ture and it being a holiday the whole town was anxious to be entertained
 In justice to the management, how ever, it should be said that the failure was not through any lack of hard work on their part or through any fail ure of the automobile owners to do the best they could. The worst fall down was made by the visitors from Tucson but they were in no way at fault and demonstrated their good faith in the meeting by making a long trip across the desert at an expense of some mon ey and several days absence from their homes. Their failure and the failure of the whole meeting was through a ser ies of unavoidable misfortunes To further show their good faith, these untoward circumstances having been overcome, the races announced for yes terday will be run today and there will be no charge for admission
 In the first place the visiting ma- chimes are Oldsmobiles which use Standard gasoline. When they arrived here Saturday they found there was no supply of that fluid in the city. They had to use the Crown gasoline but as all who were at the park could see, there was no speed in it. They en- tered in one of the big races but could get up no speed and eventually had to drop out of it. They have now secured q supply of the right kind of fuel.
 To add to the disappointment caused by this incident just as the big race with the big machines was to be call ed, one of the tires went down on Shir- ley Christy's big Packard car, the lar gest and most expensive one in the city. The machine was taken to the park all right but at the critical time it went out of business. It was there in evidence and all who cared to eX- anime it could see there was no fake about that part of the programme. i This race was necessarily called off.
 But there was one good exhibition by Andrews machine and there were some good bicycle races so the programme was not an entire failure
 The first race of the day was a mile open bicycle race in which Albert Rhodes and Roy Starkweather enter ed. They were paced by a motor bi- cycle, Rhodes winning in 2:211a.
 | The next race was between the three Oldsmobiles driven by Messrs. Close, i Seager and Purcell of Tucson and the locomobile driven by Irving Andrews. It was a three mile race and Andrews won in SA minutes. His competitors made a fair start but lost from the first and were soon out of it.
 Albert Rhodes then mounted his wheel for a squirt against time. The mile record for the territory hitherto has been 2:17M. He was paced by a motor cycle and made the mile in 2:16 Irving Andrews then entered his loco mobile against a motor cycle for mile run and won it in 2:32.
 The parade in the morning was really more interesting than the automobile part of the races. The machines talk
 ing part were those of Messrs. Close
 Seager and Purcell of Tucson and Christy, Swetnam, Kerr, Folger and
 Andrews of Phoenix.