The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-13
DASH sYsTEM IA FAILJTRE

DASH SYSTEM IA FAILURE.
 Although but two metings of the Grand Circuit chain have. been held it Is apparent to practical horsemen the three-heat system of harness racing is not going to be any more of a success than it was last year when the scheme was inaugurated by Detroit and fol- lowed by Buffalo, says Henry Ten Eyck White, the horse expert of the Chicago Tribune.
 This sesaon the management of the Cleveland track was tempted, on the ground that as there was to be no betting the occasion was propitious for the introduction of inovations, into trying the three-heat plan, and it was also intended to give some dash races. Fortunately the latter were put on the shelf when the addition to. the program. of three early closing events taken over from the abandoned Detroit meeting made a change in the daily racing card necessary, but the three-heat idea was given full tryingout.
 The result was nobody was satisfied, and had there been betting, which is the natural concomitant of racing, the grumble that was heard would have been changed to a howl. The trouble with the three-heat system, to begin with is that frequently, 1t does not de- eide anything Take, for instance, the | race at Cleveland, in which the con- testants were Mansheet, Hurley, An giola and one other horse.
 Mainsheet was the natural fayorite, but there was large folowinlg for Hurley, he being known as reliable trotter and ready, by reason of his wintering in Memphis, for hard bat | tie. The opening heat was won by l Mainsheet on his merits, but in the second mile Geers was unable to get through with Hurley at a critical time, both their horses being in his way, and again Mainsheet won In the third heat Geers took Hurley out at the word made the pace all the way and | beat his opponent in the last sixteenth,
 Under orthodox forms of racing there | should then have been a chance for the best two horses in the race to go on and decide which was the better trotter, but with the new plan in operation all hands went to the barn without anything really having been settled In fact the horse that looked to be the best of the field was returend in the records as beaten, while the one he had trotted into submission in the third mile of their contest in the off, cial books as the victor.
 That sort of racing is rank nonsense. If the advocates of quick results had 1 made the races best two heats in three the end would have come with the finish of the second heat. as Mainsheet had won both of them and shown up to that point he was the best of the field. | Looking at the matter from another point of view, the three heat plan is again found to work an absurdity l Suppose, as Is often the case, one horse wins the first and second heats What l is there left to race for in the third
 heat? Absolutely nothing. The race is already won by the two-heot winner 1 No other horse can beat him, The l audience Is not interested in seeing whether or not he can once more come l to the wire in the lead But suppose l there is in the race horse that has ] been we'll backed that through bad i racing luck or for other reasons has been unable u win either the first or l second heats, but in the third mile gets away well and can win Is his | driver going to take the heat? Not in a thousand years. So far as the mon ey he has bet on the horse is con- cerned, that is lost, because the other horse has won two heats and can be
 beaten but once, which vii not affect hisl position at the head of the sum mary Likewise, twe-thirds of first money In the race has already been credited to one two-heat winner The difference between first and second money in the third heat certainly is not enough to make any man try hard to win and penalize his horse with a fast record when by SD doing he can not win any money in the betting
 From the point of view of the pub lie that pays it's money at the gate there is nothing good about the three- heat system that could not be furnish ed with greater ease and a much great CT display of common sense by making
 the races two in three--in other words | providing that as soon as any horse wins two heats the race Is over If this plan shall result in a three or four heat race, as 1t sometimes would
 TO harm would be done, on the con trary, the audience would have found out which was the best horse in the
 fleld-an interesting fact, which under
 the persent system, they are often noi
 make aware of until they read the
 rage reports later in the season from
 some point where the stop-at- -the-end- of- f-three-heats stiffness has not be-
 come an obsession among the local arc ing magnates. l