TURF IN ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 25708, 4 February 1946, Page 6

TURF IN ENGLAND

DERBY AND ASCOT CLASSICS REVIVAL OF ROYAL TRADITION (From Our Correspondent.) (By Air Mail.) LONDON, January 17. If the rehabilitation of our racecourses and their return to the purpose for which they were constructed is a slow business, we are at any rate getting somewhere. The date for the Derby is now announced as Wednesday, June 5, and we are to have a Royal meeting at Ascot for three days instead of the usual four, on June 18, 19, and 20. Here the King and Queen will make the traditional drive from Windsor in an open carriage, with the picturesque outriders, though how society ladies are going to live up to the Ascot fashion standard on the present scale of clothing coupons is beyond my comprehension. Workmen are now busy on the repair of the Epsom tstands and buildings, and, even if there is an air of austerity about the occasion, the famous sights and scenes on Epsom Downs are sure to be reenacted when Derby Day comes along. Normally Epsom has only two meet-ings-in a year, and, as the course will nfft be ready for the usual spring fixture, it has been granted one in August, when two other famous races, the City and Suburban and Great Metropolitan Handicaps, will be run—the latter on the Saturday preceding Bank Holiday, and the former on the holiday Monday itself. _ An _ Epsom meeting on a public holiday is something new, but it should be a great success. I have long thought that such a fine course, with its vast accommodation for the multitude, should, have a fixture of this kind, and it is to be hoped it* will be continued when 'conditions become normal again. Another of the courses which can accommodate big crowds is to come back into use this year. I refer to Manchester. But the military are still in occupation here, and there is little possibility of racing talking place until the end of the season—just in time to stage the Manchester November Handicap, which is usually the last big event of the Jockey Club calendar. JOCKEY CLUB POLICY. Incidentally ' the stewards of the Jockey Club have this week issued an important statement of policy, which underlies and emphasises the previous announcement that their most immediate concern is to improve and extend amenities for the public on all racecourses, and to increase the value of stakes to winning owners. The public should! benefit in the latter case, as well as the first, for more money in stakes will mean better Tacing. The report of the Racing Reorganisation Committee which sat during the war recommended, among other things, the closing down- of some courses, without specifying any by name, and there was a fear on this account that the Jockey Club might embark upon a policy of centralisation. Those who were troubled by this prospect now have their doubts allayed, for the stewards state they have no intention of closing down any course which is run properly and provides adequate prize money. There is, of course, an implied w r arning in this, for the stewards evidently propose to'keep a keen eye upon all executives, who will be in danger of losing their licenses if they do not conform to the • club's required standards of management and enterprise. This form of over-all control by the ruling body is a step in the right direction, which has long been needed. It is evident from the statement that the club intends in future to run racing on business lines, and to draw into it as much money as it possibly can. The prospect, indeed, is bright, that as their plans .develop racing will become the sport of the common man instead of only the rich.

GRAND NATIONAL PROSPECTS. It is a coincidence that the entries for the spring double—the Lincolnshire Handicap and the Grand National—were in each case 91. The record for the National is 121, in 1920. when.there was also a record field of fi6 runners. When the race was last run, in 1940, there was an entry of 59, with a field of 30, and only three of the horses who ran then are in for this year's event —Bogskar (the winner), MacMoffat (who was second), and Black Hawk (who fell). Of thn 91 entries, 27 are trained in Ireland and six come from France. There is a chance that five winners of national steeplechases may meet in the race —Bogskar (Aintree), Prince Regent and Knight's Crest (Ireland). Kargal and Symbole (France). French horses have not been very successful dver the Aintree course—it is 37 years since Lutteur 111., then a five-year-old, won the big prize for them—but the five entered are all tried jumpers, whose records will bear inspection. Kargal, now nine years old, won the Grand Steeple at Auteuil in 1943 (this race is over four miles) and the Prix des . Drags—equivalent to tho Cheltenham Gold Cup last year, five weeks after which he came out again and won a flat race over a mile aw* three furlongs. Symbole, who is 10. won the Grand Steeple in 1942, and was successful over three and a-half miles at Auteuil less than two months ago. Miss Dorothy Paget, as -usual, has the highest individual nomination for

the race with seven entries, all of whom are trained in Ireland. Lord Bicester has four and Lord Stalbridge, the owner of Bogskar, three. What the extent of the field will be it is impossible at present to 6ay, but it may be of interest to set out the entries and runners for the last 11