Bovard - “a big, strapping horse, with long-striding, powerful action [who] appears the sort that will run all day” – won the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds for breeder/owner Sylvester W. Labrot Jr.

The Maryland-bred was a son of English Triple Crown winner *Bahram, who was imported by a group that included Labrot. The stallion had since been sold to Argen­tina interests. The plan was to run Bovard in Louisville and also in the Preakness.

Bovard didn’t run in the Kentucky Derby won by Citation, but he did make the Preakness. In the field of four he finished third, 9 lengths behind Citation and a neck better than the accomplished Better Self.

• Laurel and Bowie announced extensive improvements, including rebuilding the steeplechase and main course at Laurel; and a new water system, additional cinderblock barns and tack rooms, and a new press box for Bowie.
  
  
• Early Kentucky Derby nominees included a number of Maryland-based contenders. William Woodward’s Belair Stud had four, including Whirling Fox. William L. Brann named *Challenger II’s son Escadru. Ray Bryson nominated Equibit, winner of the Pimlico Nursery. Alan T. Clarke’s Fritz Maisel, named for the former Oriole ballplayer and close friend of the breeder/owner, and winner of the Bowie Breeders’ Stakes, was listed, as well as Labrot’s Bovard and Alfred Vanderbilt’s Loser Weeper.
  
  
• Joe Palmer gave a report from the Carolina training centers, commenting on Alfred Vanderbilt’s nearly two dozen horses at Aiken. And he noted of Camden: “[It] is the one center where steeplechasers outnumber flat horses. The biggest of the jumping stables are Mrs. Marion Scott’s Montpelier, trained by Ray Woolfe, and that of Mrs. Esther duPont Weir, trained by James E. Ryan. I cannot say about the horses, but Ryan, as a spinner of stories, is further along than I ever saw him in early March.
  
  
• The New York-based Fasig-Tipton Company announced in an advertisement the opening of four new branch offices “designed for your convenience and service” located at Almahurst Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., the Humphrey Finney residence in Towson, Md., Kentmere Farm in Boyce, Va., and in Chicago, Ill.