Sport: Ladies’ Day

Some 8,000 racegoers turned out at the Long Island estate of the late Hugh A. Murray one day last week for the autumn meet of the United Hunts Racing Association. They saw Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt (“Sonny”) Whitney’s chestnut gelding Blot win the main event, the Manhasset Steeplechase, by a half-length. They saw Winston Guest astride Lady Newberry win a thunderous race for polo ponies after his cousin Mike Phipps fell from a slipping saddle in the stretch. But what they enjoyed most, and what many of them had come specially to see, was the four-furlong race for lady riders, an innovationin United Hunts meets.

The lady jockeys were socialite maids and matrons, counterparts of gentleman jockeys but much less experienced in competitive riding. Two, Mrs. John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney and Mrs. John Frank lin, rode their own mounts. The others had been invited to ride by horse-owning friends whose silks they wore. Bookmakers found their early favorite in extremely horsey Mrs. “Jock” Whitney, although to make it more of a race she had refrained from entering one of her swiftest mounts. Then it was revealed that beauteous Mrs. “Sonny” Whitney would ride Halcyon, and Mrs. Rigan Mc-Kinney “Pete” Bostwick’s Pompeius — both stake-winners. Mrs. “Jock” Whitney was astonished and so were the bookies, who promptly set her down as a 5-to-1 shot, made Pompeius and Halcyon favorites. The start of the race decided its finish. Away at the barrier shot a bay gelding named Debenture with a pretty brunette in black & white silks on his back. The rider was Mrs. Geraldyn Redmond. With a generous lead to start, she rode Debenture hard to win by two lengths over Mrs. “Jock” Whitney on Range Finder, Mrs. Barney Balding finished third on Harold E. Talbott’s Kummel. Favorites Halcyon and Pompeius gallumped in the ruck.

A moment after the finish excitable Range Finder ran away with Mrs. Whitney, threw her as he crashed through a rail fence, gashed himself badly.