Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-31
STICK TO JAt path
Practice Of Jockeys on New
Orleans Fair Grounds.
CITY PARK THE BETTER
FAR MORE ATTRACTIVE FROM
EVERY POINT OF VIEW.
The Old Track Looks After One of the
Heavy Rains Like a Slice Of the
Louisiana Cypress Swamps.

walking around the lobby and corridors
| or the ST. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans.
curing the winter racing season, the words
VIII involuntarily rise to your lips 1.-The
| same old bunch!' The regulars of the
turf are there in such droves that the New
Orleans hotel corridors-those of the
Grunewald. the Commercial, the Cosmopoli-
tan and others, well as the ST. Charles
although the latter is the main rendezvous
look like slices cut from that Broadway
hctei in New York that has been denomi-
mated "the Paddock"
At the st. Charles last week / saw
scores and scores of the faithful of the
turf who had been careering around the
Berning ring only little while before
looking just as snug and settled and as
| much at home as they had seemed during
the long summers racing at the tracks
| around New York. These are the chaps to
whom the spectacle of the runners sweep
Ing into the stretch is as the breath In
their nostrils. Racing is an obsession with
them. They can't tolerate the thought of
staying away from the race track on any
day of the year so long a race meeting
is in progress. They would find 1t a hard
snip equal to being pent up In prison were
they compelled to lag disconsolate in the
north while the horses were running every
day in the south. Every other form of en-
loyment, even every manner of dfssipa ton,
bores and Jades them, when put alongside
the running of the ponies. A good many
OF them have gone to the Los Angeles and
San Francisco tracks this year. particularly
those who do not feel equal to Drawing the
weird climatic changes of New Orleans. But
the dead wise" ones have chosen New Or
leans for the scene of their operations, for
the reason that there are two tracks in full
swing there now, and they can have their
pick of the cards. If they don't like the
card al one track, all they have to do is to
take the other line of cars to the other
ao1y mud got thpjr
more or less good things that seem to them
to have the better chance.
Bitter Turf War.
Nobody can, at this stage of it, venture
to prophesy how long the New Orleans turf
war, so-called, is going to last. That the
fight is a bitter one, and that 1t is working
its inevitable injury to the racing game in
the far southern town, is beyond question.
The wrangling between the exploiters of the
two tracks has already aroused the activi-
lles or that element of the New Orleans
populatlon which disapproves of racing al
togethef. This element is a good deal
stronger than any Of the racing people give
II credit for being, and it is not entirely
WITHOUT VIII the bounds of probability that the
ahtl-raclng crowd might eventually close
up the game in New Orleans altogether
lhey are already giving utterance to omi-
nous mutterings. The miserable wholly
mean and clap-trappish Sunday racing h,,S
mess at the spot called Suburban Park.
over the way from New Orleans at Algiers.
Is not going to do the legitimate weekday
iaGnis game OF New Orleans any good. The
renglous folk of New Orleans are very
sore over that Sunday racing catch-penny
scheme and the fact should not he lost
sight of that New Orleans Is a religious
.oWh' despite Its reputation as a town that
Keeps the lid off most of the time Con-
serVative New Orleans folk do not relish
the spectacle of thousands of dead games.
all fired with the gambling spirit. rushing
on Yha Cob
path, bound for the Sunday track at AL
gers, and | would not be in the least SIR
pTlseo to see the Sunday racing peremp-
toriIy sat down upon long before the ides
or March, when the racing game shifts
again to the north
To the outsider breaking into New Or
leans TO look the game over after the situa-
tlon mas sort of settled and simmered down.
1t looks as if City Park the new track in,
aCgurated for the sole and expressed pur-
pose of fighting the old Fair Grounds track
mas, SO FAR, gained much the better of the
struggle.
In the first place. City Park, the new
track, is better race track because II is
modern In it's plan and equipment II is
far more attractive from every point Of
view than the old Fair Grounds track. or.
as 1t is perhaps better known, the Crescent
CITY Jockey Club track. The latter is
sort or 'befo' de wah looking outfit upon
winch Few or no improvements have been
made for many years. No improvements
We're necessary, In fact, for the exploiters of
TO themselves during the winter and with
no competition. they did not feel called
upon to dig into their profits to make i'm
provements of a character calculated to
bI1ng their property up to date.
The track itself at City Park is far better
IMAM the FAR Grounds track, and horses
run to their form much better there than
they can possibly run al the old track The
City Park track is very much quicker to
dry out after heavy rain than the Fair
Grounds track. On the same day that
hfrG fl,aI -,at
in 1.50 or thereabouts runners of about the
same class are getting miles at the
City Park track in 1.43 or La. In dry
Gather. when both tracks are fast the
new track has more than a shade on the
old one in the speed with which the horses
can cover the various racing distances.
The water Sits through the new track so
speedily that one day of sunshine. accom-
panied by moderate breezes, will convert 1t
from actual soppiness to state where it
can almost be called fast, whereas 1t takes
three or four days Of the finest weather to
make any sort of noticeable change in
the state of the old track.
Mud at the Old Track.
Nobody who has not actually seen the
old track when it is "a the state alluded to
as muddy" on the racing charts can form
the slightest idea as to how unima ginably
bad and dangerous that track is after a
rain. 1t is a veritable quagnlfre. Benning,
on the worst days, with its sandy footing
and its always safe cushion underneath, is
concrete pavement compared with that
old Fair Grounds track in New Orleans.
The Fair Grounds track looks, after a
heavy rain, like a ribbon-slice of one of
the Louisiana cypress swamps. Looking at
1t, one ceases to wonder that good horses
fail to to their form on such a track
and he begins to marvel that any old kind
Of race horses get through such going
at all 1t may be thought exaggerative
when the turf writers down there state
that the Fair Grounds track is Knee deep
in mud" but there really isn't much ex-
aggeration in such statements Horses
sliding through that going after a rainfall
actually look like dwarfed animals, run
ming with their barrels almost touching
the ground, so deep is the footing. 1t seems
simply wonderful that the selected horse
should ever win at all In such unspeakably
bad going For on no other race track In
the world does the element of pure luck c1t
so profound a figure. when the going Is
heavy, as 1t does at that same old track OF
New Orleans.
The famous path" is responsible for this
Racing men all over the country who play
the horses during the winter have heard
about that queer path. but those who have
not observed how the path game actually
works can form little idea of what ire
rnpndoDs iustitutfon IL Is In tho ha shiny oP