Sport: Scarlet Spots

Ask any horse-racing fan, from the paddock-club swell to the tinhorn sport, which track he would choose if he could visit only one before he dies, and nine out of ten answers are: Saratoga.

In August that sleepy little spa in upstate New York wakes up to become to U. S. racehorse people what Ascot is to the English, Longchamp to the French, Melbourne to the Australians. Saratoga can be as hot as the Sahara in August. Its hotels are great grotesque relics of the Mauve Decade with creaking elevators and hard beds. Its natives are openly out to make hay while the sun shines.

But its drooping elms, gardened avenues, gingerbread architecture, the little fanelike spring houses, the old horse-drawn traps and flies pulled up along the main street, and above all, the shady racing park with the thoroughbreds circling under the linden back of the clubhouse before the races—all this makes Saratoga a picturesque American scene. Last week, for the 75th year since an Irish politician named John Morrissey founded the track for the spa's bored cure-takers, the annual August trek to Saratoga began.

It was Saratoga's Diamond Jubilee year, and last week's activity presaged a season as glittering as any in its glittering past. Never before had there been so many applications for stalls (57 trainers had to be turned away). All the famed "cottages" were rented (few socialites own homes at Saratoga). Portly George H. Bull, President of the Saratoga Association, leased not one but three villas to take care of his guests. Arrowhead, Piping Rock and other famed casinos were busy taking the covers off their roulette wheels, for rumor had it that the lid, clamped down last year, would be off this season.

Besides its quaint charm and universal appeal to racing people, Saratoga is unique as a racing establishment in two other respects: it serves as the first big get-together of the season for two-year-olds; it is the national marketplace for the country's yearlings. Though many turf enthusiasts are looking forward to a possible meeting of Charles S. Howard's sensational Argentine-bred Kayak II, foremost handicap horse of the year, and William Woodward's fleet-footed Johnstown, foremost three-year-old of the year, field glasses at this Saratoga season, like all its predecessors, will focus on the 500 or more two-year-olds making their debut in swank racing society.

Well-bred two-year-olds are seldom raced until midsummer, except for occasional overnight races to test their ability. By last week the following had shown promise of keen competition in Saratoga's big two-year-old stakes: Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney's Flight Command, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt's Now What, Arnold Hanger's Roman Flag, Colonel Edward R. Bradley's Bimelech, and Millsdale Stable's Andy K.

On Saratoga's opening day this week, 15 youngsters met in the 70-year-old Flash Stakes, oldest U. S. race for two-year-olds. With 8,000 spectators looking on, Epatant, a bay colt owned by Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, a third-generation racing Whitney, ran away from the field, finished two lengths in front of Cousin Sonny Whitney's Parasang, joined the list of this year's outstanding juveniles.