138 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



:22 or :25 and would like to have stayed in there longer, and at 

 some of the fairs he had to get down to :16 or :17 to win, and 

 then when he got to Sioux City he couldn't stand the pace and 

 kept out. We are going to try to offer two or three more early 

 closing events at Sioux City this year in order to keep some of 

 the horses good until the meeting at Sioux City. Will it help us 

 if we do m'ake more early closing events, whether the purses are 

 large or small? W^hat do you think about it? 

 ■ Mr. Curtin : That is another problem, sometimes it does and 

 sometimes it does not. The objection to that is this: They are 

 all equal in May or April when they commence, but as soon as 

 the horses get out and commence to race, one or two horses abso- 

 lutely dominate those classes. There will be 25 entries in the 

 spring, and everybody thinks his horse is a winner, but after a 

 couple or three weeks of racing one stands out very prominently 

 and another is second best, and that means that the other 23 

 horses will not make much of a showing, and their owners will 

 not go on thru with them. So that you might have one or two 

 horses in each of those stakes. 



At Albert Lea, Minnesota, Dr. Higley, is secretary of their 

 county fair, and he addresses six early closing stakes to take 

 place the last week in August. He had six, and as I remember 

 he had 82 entries — something like that. I guess he had a hundred 

 entries in the six classes. And when it came time, as time went 

 on, and these outstanding horses developed in those races, I 

 think there were only 21 horses came to that meeting out of the 

 original 100 entered, but, unfortunately, they had a hard rain and 

 the events had to be called ofif. 



Mr. Moore : Then your idea is to give more money, so far as 

 the fair officials are concerned, and then take chances? 



Mr. Curtin: Yes sir. My idea is this, but it would require a 

 change in the rules. Three or four years ago the great trouble 

 was the fear of a record. If you could pass a law in the trotting 

 association not to make a record a bar until the week after the 

 Fourth of July, when the fairs begin, and let them race without 

 taking a record — take the record but don't make it a bar, it would 

 help a whole lot. That was the rule for a year, but when the 

 National and American made the same rules that was knocked 

 out by the people in the National Trotting association in the 

 east, where they don't have any early races. Under the present 

 rules a horse obtains his record and you cannot change it. In my 



