Horse Sense

Be forewarned. You are being exposed here to one of history's great buffs.

I bet on my first horse when I was 12 years old. Ever since, I have collected race tracks the way some people collect paintings or trout streams or fine restaurants. The last time I counted, I had been to 54 tracks in the U. S. and another dozen in foreign countries, including Russia. (I won money at the Russian track, the least I could do for the honor of capitalistic horse players.) I have been at the races in rain, hail, windstorm and blizzard—often when I should really have been doing something else.

What is it about racing that can fire a man's blood into such a lifelong passion?

I know artists who claim it is the beauty. Agreed. There is nothing more lovely than a thoroughbred race horse—a half ton of muscle with ankles as slim as a woman's and a muzzle that can fit in a teacup

I know horse-playing scientists who claim the thrill is like aiming a spaceship at the moon and watching it hit. Agreed. When you bet your money on a horse, you make a scientific prediction. When your prediction comes true, you have outsmarted the universe. (If your prediction fails, you know that you can try again in the next race, a half hour later.)

I know horse-playing psychiatrists who say that racing is one of mankind's few remaining outlets for hostility—an unashamed outlet for all our competitive instincts and a rare chance to recapture all the primitive joys that our forefathers used to get out of clouting each other and their women over the head with a club. I agree with the psychiatrists most of all. When I was in school, I was always the skinniest male in my class, a perennial reject from the teams. Since then, thanks to horse racing, I have been the hero of thousands of breath-taking contests of skill and brawn. I have picked off passes and raced down the side lines. I have fallen exhausted against the tape, courageously hanging onto the baton. If you ever see me at the races, cheering at a stretch duel, don't think I'm yelling merely for the horse or for the prospect of winning a bet. That's me out there running and me I'm rooting for. In what other sport can the un-athletic man gain such rugged triumphs?

The unique charm of horse racing lies in the fact that it is the only spectator sport in which the spectator is also a participant. Professional football lacks this kind of involvement—who but a man who stands six feet, seven and weighs 290 pounds can identify with the players? Who can think of himself as catcher for the Orioles? But if you buy a two-dollar betting ticket, you own part of the horse, even such a great horse as Kelso or Graustark or Buckpasser. You are the boss of the jockey, even such a great one as Willie Shoemaker or Braulio Baeza. When they win, you share their glory and their profits. When they lose, you can fire them—by never betting on them again.

Let me say at once that I do not recommend that you go to the races for reasons of profit. As will become apparent, this is impossible. You will get as much joy from the game as I do only if you watch the horses for the beauty and the excitement and bet them for the same foolish and indomitable reason that people climb mountains. Because they're there.

• • •

You think you see a lot of high-priced athletic talent at Candlestick Park or the pro-football games at Wrigley Field? Listen. On any good afternoon at the track in New York or Los Angeles, you will see 80 or 90 horses worth as much per pound as caviar, gold or sometimes platinum; there are days when you couldn't buy all the assembled four-legged talent for $5,000,000. You will see a dozen or more jockeys who earn no less than $200,000 a year, not counting their income from their oil wells and apartment houses.

Money is part of the lure. For the jockeys, horse racing is a game where, for riding a horse the distance of a few city blocks, you can take home a check for $10,000 if you win, but for only $25 if you lose. For the owners, it is a game where a man can spend $80,000 for a baby horse, risk another $15,000 training him—and get all the money back in two minutes when he wins the Kentucky Derby or the Hollywood Gold Cup. For the spectators—some of them—it is a game played with $100 win tickets, bought by the stack. Just watching the lights flash on the tote board, recording how much money is bet every two minutes, can make a man's head swim. The spectators have risked over $5,000,000 in a single day at Hollywood, Santa Anita and Churchill Downs—and over $6,000,000 in an afternoon at Aqueduct.

I myself once owned a race horse who could have earned $112,000 in a single race; she missed by the tantalizing margin of one and three quarters lengths, less than 20 feet. I have bet big and won big; I once collected $61,908.80 (a figure I will never forget) on a single bet at the Agua Caliente track in Mexico. But the money, though it puts the same kind of sparks in the air that prickle the skin when you visit the New York Stock Exchange, is only incidental to the excitement. You have to bet something, to make the magic leap from spectator to participant. But I was just as happy at the races when I was young and broke and split a two-dollar ticket with three companions, each of us putting up 50 cents.

The money you win or lose at the races isn't real money, anyway. There is an old story about the horse player, back up North in the spring after watching the races in Florida all winter, who sat shivering in a lightweight suit in the chilly and windswept grandstand. A friend noticed that he had a wallet full of money and suggested, "Why don't you spend some of it on a topcoat?" The horse player was shocked. "Spend this?" he cried. "This is betting money."

We true racing buffs earmark some of our income for betting, just as for rent and taxes. I used to throw a half dollar into a cigar box every time I denied myself a cocktail in the winter, thus building up a kitty for the day the track opened in the spring.

Still, the money they pay off at the cashier's windows, if you are lucky enough to win, is legal tender and spendable if you care to spend it. I've had many a fine dinner and many a bottle of champagne after the races—and it is amazing how much better food and drink taste when they come to you courtesy of the people who weren't as smart as you were that afternoon. One charm of the race track, which appealed to me especially in my struggling days, is that it is the only place in town where you can have a marvelous time, even take a date if you like, and come away with more money than you had when you started. Where else in the sports or entertainment worlds can you find such a delightful possibility?

• • •

Walk into the grandstand entrance with me. It won't cost much; the biggest tracks charge two dollars; and there are many smaller tracks, just as much fun, where the fellows in the parking lot will give you tickets that let you in for 50 cents, a quarter or sometimes even free.

The first thing you see is a man selling programs (25 cents). You need one; you can't tell the horses without one. The next thing you see is a man selling the Daily Racing Form or Morning Telegraph (60 cents), the daily newspapers of racing, amazingly fact-filled journals that tell you in a few cunningly condensed lines of type everything that is known to man about the breeding and past records of all the horses running this afternoon. You need the Form or Telegraph, too, to enjoy the races to the hilt—but more about this later.

Did you bring binoculars? You should have. Most tracks are a mile in circumference and there are long stretches where the horses are too far away to be seen clearly with the naked eye. To know what is going on, at every stage of the race, you have to have help. I myself use a pair of ten-power glasses that are small enough to slip inside a jacket pocket; when I go on a trip, I pack them as automatically as my razor and toothbrush. But if you don't own binoculars, cheer up. There is a stand where you can rent a pair for the afternoon for a dollar—the best investment a man can make at the track.

Let's find a seat and get settled. If we are at Hialeah, we can admire the flamingos in the infield lakes; if at Hollywood, the geese; if at Santa Anita, the flowers. If we're at a less pretentious track, there is beauty anyway. Did you ever see a fresher green than that infield; a richer tan than the newly harrowed dirt along the rail?

Let your mind drift along with the conversations of the crowd. People at race tracks don't talk about grim subjects such as war, or economic problems, or crime statistics. They talk innocently and blissfully about horses, and every man among them is a self-appointed expert. The woman behind us knows she has the winner in the first race, because his father is the great sire Bold Ruler; her friend has tabbed a different horse, because his grandfather is the great Nashua. The fellows in front of us are talking about running times, in split seconds. The husband and wife to our left are comparing the selections in the morning newspaper with those in the afternoon paper and the Form. The talk is fascinating, even if you cannot understand it, and every once in a while you hear a gem that needs no interpreter. My second favorite of all time is the priceless syntax of a discouraged horse player who sat behind me one day in New York and said, "I used to do better when I didn't know from one horse to another." My prime favorite is a conversation between two men who had become friends on the short ride by tram from the far reaches of the parking lot. Said the first man as they paid their admission, "I think the races are pretty crooked." Said the second man, "I don't think they're half as crooked as I am." (About this question of crookedness, again, more later.)

Take a look at the tote board—that long black panel with flashing lights that (continued on page 200)Horse Sense(continued from page 102) dominates the scene in front of the stands, in full view of all spectators. One set of lights tells us that posttime for the first race is two P.M.; the time of day, at the moment, is 1:36. Under the heading Probable Odds, the lights give us the "morning line," which we can now match against the names of the horses in the program. In the opinion of the track handicapper who makes the morning line, Enchanter, number one in the program, will go off at odds of 3; Space Control, number two, at 10; Black Rod, number three, at 2. These are the odds to 1 that the horse is expected to pay to win. If you buy a two-dollar ticket (the lowest denomination), you get back the odds times 2, plus your original two dollars. Thus, Enchanter, according to the board, should pay $8 to win—if he wins. Space Control should pay $22, Black Rod, $6. Sometimes the board shows hyphenated odds, such as 7-2 or 6-5. A horse that is 7-2 should pay $9; a 6-5 shot, $4.40; a 3-5 shot, $3.20.

There are other lights that show the exact amount that has been bet up to now on each horse, by program number, to win, to place and to show; also, the total amount bet in the win, place and show pools. Win tickets pay off only on the first horse across the finish line; place tickets, on the first two; show tickets, on the first three. Naturally, you have twice as much chance to collect on a place bet as on a win bet, and three times as much chance to collect on a show bet. Naturally, you will also collect less on a place ticket and still less on a show ticket. There is no way of knowing the exact amount that a place or a show ticket will pay, but you can make a rough guess. A horse whose probable-win odds are shown as 5 will pay $12 to win and usually around $6 to place and $4 to show. Any horse that is on the board at less than 5 is hardly worth playing to place or show.

As we sit watching the board 24 minutes before posttime, the lights change slowly. There is not much action as yet at the betting windows; the figures for total money bet in the win, place and show pools are small. Then, as posttime draws nearer, the pace picks up. The totals double and double again. The morning line, which was just an informed guess, now gives way to the actual odds dictated by the amount of money bet on each choice. Enchanter, the number-one, changes from 3 to 4, then to 7-2, next 4 again, then 3 again, then 5-2. The bettors are lining up at the windows; the tickets are being punched out as fast as the machines can print them; the money is pouring in and the odds are shifting.

The tote board, itself a fascinating thing to watch, is part of a complicated electronic system whose wires stretch all over the track. When you buy a two-dollar win ticket on the number-one horse, the man at the window pushes the button I on his machine; the machine prints your ticket and punches it out; the two-dollar transaction is flashed to a computer and eventually becomes part of the money shown on the tote board as bet on the number-one and in the total win pool. As the amounts change, the computer figures out the new probable odds.

Though the electronic apparatus is new, the method of betting at modern race tracks is old; it was invented in 1869 by a Frenchman who called it the pari-mutuel system. All the money bet to win goes into a pool from which 15 percent (in most states) is skimmed off the top; the state takes part of this money in taxes; the track management takes the rest to pay for the purses that keep the horses running, the expenses of operating the track and the profits. The 85 percent of the pool that is left goes to the people who hold tickets on the winner. The total amount is divided by the total number of winning two-dollar tickets sold; the result is the pay-off price that is posted on the winner. In the place pool, the same system is followed, except that the pool is split down the middle and divided between the two horses that have finished first and second. The show pool is divided three ways.

In addition to the 15 percent skimmed off the top, the track and the state also keep what is called the "breakage"—the odd pennies and nickels. (A winner that would otherwise pay $6.89 actually pays $6.80.) This brings the total skim-off to around 16 or 17 percent—a little more in some states, a little less in others. A horse that would pay $10 to win if there were no taxes and no commission to the track winds up paying $8.40. Thus, pari-mutuel betting, though the soul of modern racing, is also the reason you cannot win at the races. When I knew less about racing, I used to wonder why so few people leaving the track seemed to be celebrating. The reason is the 16-to-17-percent "take," as it is called. On that day when the crowd bet the record $6,000,000 at Aqueduct, they had $960,000 less in their pockets at the end of the day than at the start. Obviously, there were lots of losers, only a few winners.

So you can't expect to win over a season or over the years, although you can have some glorious winning days. Figure it this way: If you go to the track and bet two dollars on each of nine races, plus two dollars on the daily double, this makes a total of $20, of which 16 percent comes to $3.20. That's what an average day of betting should cost you, if you have average luck—and I know of no other place where $3.20 will buy you as much pleasure. If you want to multiply the thrills by betting more, of course, you must pay more for the privilege. The $5 bettor loses an average of $8 a day; the $10 bettor, $16.

The daily double, incidentally, is a combination bet on the first two races of the day; if you like the number-eight horse in the first race and the number-three in the second, you pay the man your two dollars and ask for the 8-3. Both of them must win, not just one; so the ticket represents quite a gamble. You won't cash many doubles; but when you do, the return can be worth waiting for. (The record pay-off in the U. S. was $10,772.40.) Some tracks also have a twin double, usually on the last four races of the day. You buy a ticket picking the winners of the sixth and seventh races; and, if you hit both of them, you trade in the ticket not for money but for another ticket trying to name the winners of the eighth and ninth races. In other words, you have to pick four winners in a row. It's not easy, but it can be done; in fact, somebody wins the twin double every day. The pay-offs are beautiful. It was on the Caliente track's variation of the twin double that I won my $61,908; the record all-time pay-off on a twin stands at $124,972.

But let's get back to the grandstand. It's getting closer to that two-P.M. post-time. The lights are flashing. People leave their seats and return with their betting tickets. Ten minutes before post-time, the bugle is blown and the horses come onto the track—a dozen marvelously conditioned four-footed athletes with glistening coats of black, chestnut, bay or gray. On their backs sit the jockeys, little men but athletes, too, in silks and caps all colors of the rainbow. All this is seen against the green of the infield, the tan of the dirt, the white poles of the rail. The parade to the post is the stuff that art is made of, a scene that, once you have drunk it in, never loses its power to intoxicate.

If the starting gate is in front of the stand—or if your binoculars are strong enough—you watch the horses going in. In race-track parlance, they are being loaded into the gate, and loaded is the word for it. The gate has stalls barely big enough to hold horse and rider; some horses hate it and almost have to be lifted in bodily by the crew of starters; once in it, they paw the dirt, toss their heads, rear and lunge. Then there comes the magic moment when they are all in line and standing still; the chief starter presses a switch; the fronts of the stalls fly open. The loud-speaker bellows, "They're off!"—and off they are, plunging forward to top speed within a few powerful strides.

Watch the jockeys now. The path along the rail is the shortest route from start to finish, but there is not enough room on the rail for everybody. Here is where the phrase "jockey for position" comes from. Seated on one fast-moving 1000-pound animal in the midst of many, the jockey has to look for openings, avoid bumps and blind switches, get whatever racing room and save whatever ground he can. Some horses run best when they are in front; watch the jockeys on these horses fight for the lead. Other horses run best when they come from behind; watch their jockeys try to "rate" them—put enough pull on the reins to make the horse save his best effort for later, but not so much as to discourage him from running at all.

From shortly after the start to about the half-mile pole—the red-and-white pole a half mile from the finish—the race is like a time bomb ticking away. Not much happens. The horses stay in about the same relative positions, one in front, some others close behind, others trailing. Then, between the half-mile pole and the three-eighths pole, watch the race explode. This is where the jockeys go to the whip and make their move. The front-runners are getting tired. The horses that trailed are moving up. The field bunches; sometimes it swings around the last turn with a half dozen horses abreast, fanned across the track, and still others close behind them, running hard and hoping for a chance to get through. Down the straightaway of the stretch, in the last quarter mile to the finish line, some of them, having already given their all, shorten stride and drop back. Others come doggedly on. Some-times there are two leaders racing head to head; one gets in front, but the other refuses to give up; the heads bob back and forth stride after stride. The crowd makes a sound that can be heard nowhere else in the world, the sustained roar of thousands of mingled shouts and prayers, like the climax of a symphony sustained beyond endurance. Then at last the field goes across the finish line. One horse, one jockey, one owner has won—and so, perhaps, have you and I.

Let's go down to the winner's circle at the finish line. Watch the winning horse when he comes up, after coasting on sheer momentum for a quarter mile past the finish line while his jockey tries to pull him up. Look at the sweat on his flanks. Watch his ribs heave. He's been in a contest, all right. Look at the jockey. He, too, is panting for breath. Riding a race horse looks easy, but it takes enormous strength and perfect physical condition. The jockey, having guided the horse, rated him, urged him on, pumped his own arms and legs in perfect timing with the horse's stride, is just as tired as the horse.

If winning jockey and horse do not bear the same number as your mutuel ticket, be of stout heart. We have eight more races in which to get even.

• • •

Besides the racing, most tracks have excellent food. At the New England tracks, you can get clam chowder; in Maryland, crab cakes. Everywhere you can have frankfurters, which seem to taste even better at a race track than at a ball game. Drinks are no more expensive than anywhere else and have a strangely benign effect. There is something about the race-track atmosphere that pulls the fangs of alcohol without dulling the pleasure it affords. In all my thousands of afternoons at race tracks, I doubt that I have seen as many as a half dozen people who were drunk.

If you want, you can go to the clubhouse restaurant and, at most tracks, watch the races from your table. Getting into the clubhouse will cost anywhere from an extra dollar to an extra three dollars; drinks and lunch will cost no more than at any other good restaurant. (However, if you spend the entire afternoon at the table and order drinks from time to time after lunch is over, the waiter will expect considerably more than a 15-percent tip.) When I'm at the track alone, I like to go early, study the Morning Telegraph over a couple of drinks, have a shrimp cocktail between the first and second races, soup between the second and third, and the entree for as long after the third race as I can make it last.

Should you take a date? It depends on the girl. The races make for a long afternoon—around four hours or more if you get there a half hour early and stay to the end. If the girl is bored by racing and demands a lot of conversation, you can be in trouble. If she is crazy about the horses and feels the same way you do about studying the program and the Form between races, the date can be half the fun. After every race, at every race track every afternoon, you can watch the couples who have just had the winner exchanging the most joyous embraces you ever saw. Is there a better way of celebrating?

I once lost a girl at the track. We had two dollars left between us before the last race, plus bridge tolls home. The question was whether to bet it on the nose of the long shot I liked, and go for broke, or to bet it place and have a more reasonable chance of coming out with dinner money. I left it up to her and she opted for place. The horse won and paid $83 to win but only §13 to place. We had dinner money, all right, but I never felt the same about her again. It was our last date.

If you do take a girl along, should you furnish her with betting money? There are different schools of thought. She will have more fun, of course, if she bets; and for some reason, women are loath to risk their own funds. My feeling is that if she won't put up her own money to buy her own tickets or share in part of your betting, she should be willing to settle for an agreement that your profits will go to buying the best dinner and champagne in town. But perhaps I'm prejudiced by the memory of another afternoon, when I gave a date $20 in betting money and watched her run it up to over $200, while I lost every race. She graciously gave me back my $20, but I still felt that something was wrong with the arrangement.

• • •

Which brings us to the biggest question of all: How do you know which horse to bet on?

Some people follow the newspaper selections. In most cities that have a race track, there is at least one newspaper that has a pretty good handicapper on the sports staff. You can check up, before you ever go to the track, by comparing his selections in today's paper with the results of the races in tomorrow's paper. You may find that the handicapper has very few winners—as did the handicapper for the old St. Louis Star-Times when I worked there. (He was an office boy and the most consistent loser on horses I have ever known; his salary check never lasted from payday to payday.) On the other hand, the handicapper may be a top man like Bob Hebert in the Los Angeles Times, who picks about as many winners as anybody.

The trouble with following even the best of the newspaper handicappers is that you abandon all hope of breaking even over the long run. No newspaper handicapper ever shows a profit over a season. The reason is that so many people follow their selections that the horses always go off at lower odds than they should. The better the handicapper, the bigger his following and the worse the odds on the horses he picks.

Some people bet the favorites—a method that results in many winners, though always at low odds. At almost every meet at almost every track, the favorites win about one race in three. If favorites paid an average of 2 to 1, or six dollars, you'd break even. But the average isn't this high—so, again, you abandon all hope of breaking even over the long pull.

Some people bet post positions; I have one friend, for example, who is crazy about number three. Crazy is the word for it. In a 12-horse race, the odds against guessing the right number are 11 to 1. You could break even only if the average price on winners was $24—and the fact is that only a very small proportion of winners pays that much. Betting on jockeys is equally bad, for the same reason.

The only way to give yourself a real chance of beating the 16-percent "take" is to pick the horses yourself, by learning to read the Racing Form or the Morning Telegraph. This is also the way to have the most fun, for there is no greater thrill in racing than to study the past performances, try to figure out which horses will set the pace and which will come from behind, decide which one should logically be the winner—and then watch your prediction come true. If you're going to spend any time at the races, you should send away to the Form or Telegraph for their pamphlets on how to read their past performances. (They are available, for ten cents in stamps for mailing, from Department PP, The Morning Telegraph, 525 West 52nd St., New York, N.Y. 10019; and Daily Racing Form, 731 Plymouth Court, Chicago, Ill. 60605.)

Once you understand anything at all about the Form or the Telegraph, you are in a position to do better than the average person who merely follows the favorites or the newspaper selections. No matter what method you use for picking winners, you are bound to come up with a few. You can take the horse that shows the fastest recent time for the distance, or has run against the best class of opposition, or has been most consistently in the money in his last three or four starts—almost anything. As long as there is some logical reason to think the horse may win, you're going to pick winners, and often at good odds. To improve your percentage, you can read a good book on handicapping methods, such as Bob Hebert's Secrets of Handicapping.

Becoming a really good handicapper, of course, takes experience. It took me, I would say, about 20 years. Even now, I don't play the horses in hope of profit, but I figure that I have cut down the 16-17-percent "take" against me to about 1 or 2 percent. I can bet $100,000 a year—a lot of action, a lot of fun—and lose only $1000-$2000, which makes racing a good deal cheaper than owning a boat. To do better than this, I would have to go to more trouble than I would care to undertake. The people who try to make a living at the races work at it every day, often in strange and taxing ways. A number of handicappers have stationed paid assistants around the track with anemometers, to measure the speed of the wind. There was one fellow a number of years ago, when track surfaces varied more widely than they do today, who kept samples of dirt taken from every track in the country, so that he could shake them up with water and feel with his own hands what was meant when the track was termed muddy on a rainy day. Even with this kind of gadgetry, the people who try to make a living playing the horses all seem to wind up broke.

• • •

I've known a few people—fortunately, only a few—who got badly hurt playing the horses. All of them were done in by greed, usually in combination with one of those two evils of racing known as (1) systems or (2) touts.

Most people who get serious about handicapping try sooner or later to work out a "system"—some method of handling their bets to guarantee a profit. The first one I ever heard of was to start by betting two dollars on the favorite and doubling up if he lost, with four dollars on the next race, eight dollars on the next, and so on. Sooner or later, the theory goes, you're bound to hit a winner and get back everything you lost, plus a profit. The trouble is that if ten favorites lose in a row, you're out more than $2000 and have to bet $2048 on the next race. There are dozens of times a year when the favorites lose ten in a row, and sometimes they lose 20 in a row. The fellow who told me about this system tapped out within a week. I bought his car, cheap.

All systems are variations on this one, and all are bound to break you if you stick to them. Just as every conceivable mathematical system for beating roulette has been tried and proved a failure, so has every system in racing. College professors have even tried working out new ones on computers. No go.

The tout is something else again—a parasite who makes a living convincing other people he can make them rich on the races. At the smaller and less-well-policed tracks, the touts sometimes make their pitch in person. I've been approached by a half dozen of them at various times, on pretexts such as asking me for a match or borrowing my program. Usually touts work in pairs; the one who makes the approach points to a prosperous-looking fellow who seems to be coming from the $50 window with a thick wad of tickets. (Actually, they are old losing tickets that he has picked up from the floor.) Tout number two chases away tout number one, but decides to confide in you. He claims to be a trainer, or the brother of a jockey; and he's got a sure thing in the race. Sometimes he merely tries to persuade you to bet on the horse, hoping to get part of your winnings, if there are any. Sometimes he tries to talk you into letting him buy the tickets for you, in which case, he simply holds your money, or buys only a few tickets, and disappears if the horse wins.

Other touts advertise in newspapers that still permit this kind of shenanigans, or in the cheaper racing sheets; they promise to slip you a sure winner if you will bet $10 or $50 for them. Often they try to find a six-horse race and give each of the horses to a sixth of their clients, thus guaranteeing that some of the suckers will have winnings to share. They depend on a fast turnover for their profits, and apparently they get it.

One reason touts keep prospering is the widespread belief that horse racing is crooked and that there are owners, trainers and especially jockeys who know in advance who is going to win. This legend was once based partially on fact. In bygone days, when purses were smaller and racing was less well supervised, there were a good many people in racing who made a living pulling off betting coups. With the help of a dope needle, a trainer could run a horse "hot" or "cold"—cold, or unable to run a lick, until some day when the competition was poor and the odds were good, then hot with a shot of narcotic that made him run his legs off. Or the jockey was ordered to keep giving the horse what is called an "easy race"—holding him back—until the odds were right.

Some races were won by ringers; there were paintbrush artists who spe cialized in turning a championship-grayed chestnut horse with two white feet in back into the dead likeness of a hopeless loser who was bay and had two white feet in front. There have been jockey rings that actually fixed races, with one boy riding his head off while the others held back.

Some of the legends are fabulous. There was a horse called Hiram Johnson, so slow that he couldn't even win at the bush tracks in Montana, that was shipped into New Orleans for the Christmas Eve Handicap one year, went off at tremendous odds and won easily, netting $100,000 for two mysterious gentlemen who cashed their win tickets after the race. By the time track officials got suspicious and went back to the barns to look for Hiram Johnson, he had disappeared, never to be seen again. Nobody knows to this day what first-class horse it was that pretended to be Hiram Johnson, or who it was that engineered the deception. There was a celebrated ringer expert named Paddy Barrie, an artist at make-up jobs on horses, who once won $250,000 with a fast three-year-old named Aknahton, which he ran one day in Maryland as a slow two-year-old named Shem.

Alas for lovers of larceny, modern science has put an end to all this. It is impossible to run a ringer today. Every race horse has a distinguishing number indelibly tattooed inside his upper lip; and in addition, photographic records are kept of his chestnuts—horny growths on the inside of the legs near the knees, which are as individual as fingerprints are for human beings. Chemical tests of the horses' saliva and urine have ended doping, except for a few scattered cases a year. The film patrol, recording each race in moving pictures that can be run over and over again and studied at leisure, has made it impossible to fix a race and almost impossible to give a horse an easy race. At any track that has good stewards—the men who supervise racing—the races are truly run. A jockey who even tries to nudge his horse into greater speed with an electric prod, formerly a popular tool, is likely to find himself ruled off at once—as was a jockey named Luis Flores who tried it at Mon-mouth Park in New Jersey last summer. (A steward figured that something was wrong and ordered Flores searched when he jumped off the horse. At that, no betting coup was involved. Jockey Flores was just giving a little illegal help to a 3-2 favorite.)

Even in the days when racing had its angles, the touts never had any inside information to sell. If an owner, trainer or jockey is trying to win a bet, the last thing in the world he wants is to have somebody else catch on and drive down the odds. Once in a while, an owner and a trainer know something about a horse even today—in perfectly legitimate fashion—that the public cannot know. They may have discovered that the horse ran his last two races, bad ones, on a painfully infected foot, which has since been cured. They may know that he will run better in his first attempt at a distance than he ever was able to run in shorter races. If they have this kind of information and want to bet the horse big, they would never think of telling their mothers, much less some seedy tout who pretends to be a jockey's brother.

As a matter of fact, most owners and trainers are not big bettors—and are notoriously bad judges of what their horses will do. You have to be an optimist to own or train horses, and you are always inclined to think too highly of the chances of any horse you run. I have had a horse in a race where I knew some of the other owners or trainers and heard a half dozen of them say they were sure of winning. I was sure of winning, too. None of us did. The moral is: Even if you happen to make the acquaintance of an owner or a trainer, view his "inside information" as suspiciously as you would view the most transparently phony tout. If he knows something, he won't tell you. If he doesn't really know anything, his opinion is worthless. The same goes for jockeys, who are among the world's worst handicappers. There have been many cases where a famous jockey, given his choice of two horses to ride in a big and profitable race such as the Kentucky Derby, turned down the eventual winner and put himself on a horse that finished up the track.

Let me tell you from personal experience how smart owners and trainers are about their horses. A couple of years ago, I owned a horse named Dr. Dubious. (I named him, as you may have guessed if you are a collector of old vaudeville and TV skits, after a Smith and Dale act.) I ran him a few times in Ohio, and he couldn't work up a fast gallop. In the desperate hope that he might do better on the harder surfaces of the tracks in Florida, I shipped him to Tropical Park, where he again was a dismal also-ran. The trainer and I decided we would feed him only one more week and give him only one more chance. In the meantime, I made arrangements with a woman writer I know who had just bought a farm in Maryland and wanted a horse or two to ride; I said she could have Dr. Dubious if he ran as badly next time as before, if she would pay the shipping fee from Florida. I was giving the horse away, mind you. I had some friends who were spending the Christmas holidays in Florida, at the races. I warned them that, whatever else they did, they should never risk a cent on the slow-footed Dr. Dubious.

The horse ran next on New Year's Day. I was listening to the race results that evening on the radio, and what do you suppose I heard? The second race at Tropical Park was won by none other than Dr. Dubious, paying $164.40 to win, $87.40 to place and $30.20 to show. I didn't have a nickel bet on him. You think you've felt bad on a New Year's Day?

Dr. Dubious ran that one unexpected good race and then never ran another like it, though he did win quite a few races for years at the cheaper tracks in New England and West Virginia. Why? I don't know, and neither does anybody else—and that's one of the things that make horse racing.