The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-08-28
KILLINGS" THAT FAILED
TOLD BY AN OLD SPORT.
Successful Tricks Pulled on On Race
Track Are Way In Minority.

SuccesStuI Tricks ruled On On Race
Track Are Way In Minority.
From the Washington Evening Star.
The group of men with the conspicu-
Gus diamonds and the close-cut hair
were talking of the great killing"
that was made on the colt Flexion at
Brighton Beach the other day.
That Flexion trick" remarked one
of them who used to own and train a
stable of race horses himself. was one
of those successful coups that every
body hears about. Few hear about the
nine other carefully framed-up killings
out of ten that fail to go through
when a really tremendous opera
ton is successfully put under, like that
first outing of Flexion's, all hands hear
the real lovely, fascinating news, and
recruits for the betting end of the
turf are made in shoals. The killings
make the game look inviting and easy,
and the fresh money of the people
whose imaginations are captivated by
the newspaper accounts of the great
coups drifts to the bookieS' satchels.
Il won't say that it is about as hard
for a man born in 1870 to get a pension
for total disability incurred in the bat
tie of Gettysburg as it is to pull off a
successful killing on a race track now
adays-but it's pretty close to it. It's
not now as it was in the old days, when
the owner of an improved horse
could bring the beast out on to the
track, give him a. slap on the haunch
tell the jock to fetch the animal home
by the air line, and then stroll into the
ring and collect. Any one of a thou
sand things can f1atten a prepared
coup out like a piece of stretched roof
tie nishap can utterly destroy all pos
sioilty of pulling of a killing that has
been shrewdly planned and worked
over, night and day, for months.
"A few years ago, for instance, that
fine western mare. Fleur- de-Lys, was
brought east, after wonderfully sue
cessful campaign on the California
tracks, for a killing. On one of the
New York tracks she worked her little
mile one early dawn in nothing as
the stable hands say, and none of the
railbirds caught the work.
The mare was pitchforked, with
nothing worth mentioning in the way
of weight on her back. into an over
night handicap with a lot of good
horses, which made a big price against
her a certainty. Her people designed
to blister the pool rooms throughout
the country on the win, and so they
points with the money a few days be-
fore the race.
Now, a short time before the con-
templated killing the owner of the
mare got the jockey clubs permission,
for some reason or other, to change her
name from Fleur-de-Lys to Maxine
The commissioners who had gone West
and South with the big money to bet
on Fleur- de-Lys didn't know anything
this switch n har NJ ms RI a
inc. And the owner and his people
planning the coup at the New York
end of the line Just forgot to inform
the commissioners of the change.
1T happened, too, that the pool
rooms in the various cities to which the
commissioners went failed to chalk
formerly Fleur- de-Lys after the name
of Maxine. as is occasionally done in
such cases. and so the commissioners,
concluding that for some reason or
other the mare hadn't been entered in
the race that was to be the killing,
kept all of that fine Fleur- de-Lys mon
ey right in their clothes.
well, I'll leave it to anybody to
draw a little charcoal sketch of how
those commissioners felt when the tel
egraphers in the pool rooms. after
calling off the race and announcing
that Maxine had strolled in something
easy, supplemented their calI-off with
the dry remark, Maxine was formerly
Fleur-deLys.' The Maxine people
made a big thing of the win at the
track, of course. but so trivial a thing
as their failure to inform their com
mlssioners that change in the mares
name had been applied for cost them
good many tens of thousands of dol
lars.
About eight years ago, at the now
defunct Roby track near Chicago there
was a killing blocked out that would
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