Sportsman v. Sports

Horse racing is a sport which interests two highly divergent types of people. They might roughly be classed as Sportsmen and Sports. The turf world last week watched with interest a clash between representatives of the two types, in Florida.

Hialeah racetrack, at Miami, is controlled by immensely rich and patrician Joseph Early Widener of Philadelphia who owns 16 Rembrandts, a cemetery for his deceased racehorses at Elmendorf, near Lexington, Ky., and has Tautz of London come over twice a year to see to his clothes. Vice-chairman of the U. S. Jockey

Club, Mr. Widener is head of the Belmont Park Association, strongly interested in racing at Aqueduct and Saratoga, adviser to John D. Hertz and other Chicagoans in the restoration of Illinois racing to an honest plane at Arlington Park. Transforming Hialeah from a rundown track into the liveliest winter racing resort in the U. S., he caused $1,500,000 to be spent on improvements. Last week Mr. Widener was indignant over rivalry which came from a new Miami racetrack called Tropical Park, controlled by two Manhattan sports named Bill Dwyer and Bill Gallagher.

When the Florida State Legislature passed, over Governor Doyle E. Carlton's veto, a bill to legalize parimutuel betting, Sports Gallagher & Dwyer last spring formulated plans for a track to compete with Hialeah. They bought a disused dog-track at Coral Gables, got Frank J. Bruen, onetime Hialeah general manager, to run it for them. When the State Racing Com-mission met last fortnight, it cut Hialeah's customary racing season of 45 days to 36, gave the new track a non-conflicting schedule of 37 days, starting on Dec. 26 before the Hialeah season and resuming after it from Feb. 22 to March 19. Indignant because the new track had been assigned the late February days which are the peak of the Miami season, Sportsman Widener promptly stated that no horses quartered at Hialeah would be permitted to race at Tropical Park; that no owner or trainer who raced any of his horses at Tropical Park would be allowed to race at Hialeah.

What looked like a lively battle subsided quickly when the Florida Racing Commission held another meeting. The Commission ruled that horses stabled at any track in the State might be raced at any other track, then changed the schedule of racing dates so that the Hialeah meeting will begin on Jan. 14, last until Feb. 27.

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