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Show G11 t OltGI I I LWCI I YN president of the Trolley league which opens its fifth season this forenoon 111 UG MAY PRQVEJMG FAILURE Cubans Do Not Understand Game and Poor Railway Facilities Disastrous HAVANA, April 10 The Havana rac ng venture of Curley Brown seems o be a failure The Cubans do not understand the turf game and they have shown but little interest n it The track itself is fast now In an other year it will be of whirlwind order The stands and equipment are modern the best that money can buy Some of the best thoroughbreds in the wo Id have been running there but the crowds will not come The weather here has been beautiful yet on Saturdays and Sundays the crowds rarely go ever the 1000 mark Sometimes it is much less The biggest part of the crowd is made up of Amen can visitors The slim attendance has forced the management to offer pu ses that are small The horse owners even those with winning stables are barely clear ing expenses Some are thousands of dollars behind the game The feed bills, that constitute one of the main costs of the upkeep of a stable are from two to f onr times higher in Havana than in the states. The horse owners as a re suit have become discouraged and many have vowed that they never will go baek to Havana Poor Car Service Probably one of the many reasons why the crowd doesn t go to the track is because of the lack of rapid transit facilities If one doesn t own an automobile auto-mobile it takes him nearly three hours to make the round trip from the city to the park The park called Oriental jArk is about eight or ten miles from the heart of the city and the street ear service is abominably alow The Cubans- came in fairly large crowds when the track first opened hut the gambling element has been giving the track the go by since the bookies have been lowering the odds. When the meet first opened the bookies offered good odds The Cubans took them up and manv big killings were made That handed the bookies a real wallop and they have been retrenching since b shortening the odds As a result the Cubans won bet. The worst beating that has been handed to the bookies is by an Amen can, who never saw a horse race until he went to Havana He s wealthy and went to the track one day to see what a race was 1 ke 4 friend coaxed h m nto mak ng a bet and he won He s been betting on every race since and h s luck has been phenomenal. He s $4" ahead of the game now and in ad dit on has won three bookie stands Hard on Bookies He h t one book e for $ 5 on one race The bookie couldn t 1 quidate Instead of mak ng a compia nt against the book e and fore ng him to close up this mer can took o er the stand and takes a b g share of the profits. The next da he broke another bookmaker and a week later he rammed a th rd When the bookies were unable to pay him he took iver their stands Brown and those assoe ated with h m n the new track are discouraged but they are game They are said tq be los ng a barrel of money every week but they aren t go ng to q t Th y ha e a lot of confidence n Havana as a racing center and they feel that when they open the r track next season that the crowds w U come n quant t es If the ra lroacl compan es could be influenced to improve the service to the track it s more than likely that the crowds would show an apprec able m crease But unt 1 th s s done Brown and h s associates must depend almost altogether on the class that owns auto mob les |