Maryland’s spring racing season was hampered by poor weather (19 of 26 days during the Havre de Grace and Pimlico meets were run on off tracks), but enlivened by great performances.
“Calumet Farm’s Citation, growing steadily in public estimation as one of the ‘greats’ of our time, displayed his speed on three occasions in Maryland,” wrote Don Reed. The third time was the Preakness, of which Humphrey Finney noted in the May 15 entry of The Editor’s Saddlebag: “A grand day of racing weather, with a great horse in Citation a very easy winner of the Preakness, over only three game enough to try him.”
Maryland-breds were successful in Pimlico stakes, led by King Ranch’s Scattered, a 10-length winner of the Pimlico Oaks. By Whirlaway out of Imperatrice, Scattered was foaled and raised at Stadacona Farm by Mrs. C.W. Williams for W.H. LaBoyteaux. After being prepped in New Jersey for the yearling sales, Scattered was sold at Saratoga to Robert J. Kleberg of King Ranch for $23,000.
Maryland-breds were also winning at Jamaica in New York, reported Joe Palmer, who saw Miss Disco and Kitchen Police, both bred by Alfred Vanderbilt but racing for other stables, finish first and third in the Interborough.
Scattered, the second of 16 foals for top stakes performer Imperatrice and a half-sister to Secretariat’s dam Somethingroyal, would add the Coaching Club American Oaks to her tally. Her foals included Alabama Stakes winner Here and There.
- Stymie, the world’s leading money winner with $844,760 and second in Pimlico’s Dixie, was expected to join the Maryland breeding ranks at Stymie Manor Farm in Sparks upon his retirement. The busy breeding farm, formerly known as Cannaday, was owned by Stymie’s trainer Hirsch Jacobs and Isadore Bieber, who took it over the previous year.
Stymie retired the next year at age 8 with earnings of $918,485, but the Hall of Famer never stood at the farm named for him, instead going to Kentucky and California.
- Photographer Bernard Livingston presented a movie, still in the works, during the Maryland Horse Breeders Association’s annual meeting. When completed, after editing and sound-track narration, the color film about horse activities throughout the state would be available for any interested groups – in and outside of Maryland. It showed lively scenes of raising, training, schooling and racing Thoroughbreds and hunters, as well as farming with heavy-horse teams, the use of ponies for pleasure and showing, trotters, saddle-horses, and other breeds. It was planned to be “a good and enjoyable bit of propaganda.”
