Kentucky Derby

(See front cover)

The crowd kept quiet as the long line of thoroughbreds came out of the gate at Churchill Downs and moved slowly up the midway in the rain. Then they saw Earle Sande on Gallant Fox, seventh in line, and a few people shouted; Sande tipped his cap. Tannery, the horse that all the Southern sports were betting on, was 13th, and the band played "My Old Kentucky Home." Through the grey tissue of the rain it was hard to see what was happening at the post, but the patent stall-gate the starters were using speeded things up. In a minute the line of horses that had been relaxed and flexible in single file became a tight cordon between the fences, its component parts moving so nearly in unison that for a fraction of a second their movement seemed an illusion -- that second in which the crowd took its breath to let out the abrupt blurred noise that meant the Derby had started.

High Foot was in front . That much was clear as the horses, digging inside toward the rail , formed an irregular phalanx. A few yards further on Alcibiades, the only filly in the race, passed High Foot and held the lead past the grandstand to the clubhouse turn. As they swung around the turn into the back stretch with a mile still to go, a big bay colt swung to the outside, gaining ground. It was Sande on Gallant Fox--an amazing, disdainful thing to do, for when a jockey swings outside so early in a race it shows he does not think much of the other horses. While Gallant Fox closed, Tannery was moving along the rail and soon these two with Alcibiades between them were running like a three-horse chariot team. Crack Brigade came on behind them. Alcibiades was the first to drop back; that left it up to Tannery, but Tannery could not hold the pace either. Gone Away and Gallant Knight were going strongest now, and the jockies on both of them were using the whip; Sande looked over his shoulder and gave Gallant Fox a cut, and although Gallant Fox was wide on the turn, the others, saving ground inside, did not gain. They still had to run the length of the stretch, when a ruddy gentleman sitting in a glass pagoda near the finish line brought his binoculars away from his eyes. With a throaty exclamation, he said, "Fine, I'm glad."'

Having thus complimented William Woodward, owner of Gallant Fox, who sat beside him in the pagoda, Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, took little further interest in the actual running. Although his conduct might have seemed odd in view of the fact that, urged by his friend Joseph E. Widener, he had come from England on the Aquitania expressly to be present during these 2 minutes and 7 seconds, a large fraction of which had still to elapse, he was quite in his senses. Himself a horseman, smart in the hunting field when he was younger, a breeder and trainer of racers, member of a family that has raced for centuries, he knew as soon as he saw the field challenge Gallant Fox in the backstretch and get stood off on the turn that it was all over. Chatting and smiling, he watched Gallant Fox come in first. Gallant Knight and Ned O finish second and third respectively, then went out in the rain to present Mr. Woodward with the Derby cup.

Edward George Villiers Stanley won a Derby himself once--The British Derby at Epsom, in 1924, with Sansovino. He gave the -L-11,000 stake money to his trainer. Winning this race, which was founded by the 12th Earl and named for the Derby family, gratified one of the two most important ambitions of his life. His other ambition--to be Prime Minister of England--he renounced after the War because he said that he was "tired of the limelight." He had been Secretary of State for War , had raised the British Army of 1915 as Director-General of recruiting. It had been said of him that while he called the men to arms his wife "summoned the women to the fields."

Edward George Villiers Stanley is 65, rotund and thick, with the complexion of a rosy baked apple and a face so typical of English county blood that in a colored topper, with a Union Jack replacing the cloth waistcoats which are the customary covering of his compact and dignified paunch, he would look exactly like the standard cartoons of John Bull. The humor active in his blue eyes and in his short British sentences disturbed the reporters who attended his arrival in Manhattan. It was well recognized that his coming--even at the invitation of Mr. Wridener, who wanted him to be at the Belmont Stakes in June--was exploitation matter for those Southern and mid-Western racing and businessmen whose prosperity depends in no small way on the assurance that 80,000 people will be in Louisville every year to see the Derby. Something about Edward George Villiers Stanley, however, seemed to refute the possibility that he was being used 'to drum up the prestige of a native race--seemed to proclaim that Lord Derby had turned the situation round and was using the race to acquaint U. S. people with all the things which he, in his person, symbolizes and embodies: England, her solidity and sportsmanship, and the power, unshakeable and hygienic, of her upper classes, who go on winning the Battle of Waterloo on every playing field in the world.

Approachable, bluff, democratic, Lord Derby's behavior at the track and elsewhere was what one would expect of a man who has been accused by his political enemies of subordinating principle to personality, who enjoys country fairs, gives banquets to his tenants, never misses a good race, often entertains his King and Queen at dinner, and who says of himself: 'T have been snubbed, but experience has taught me not to be oversensitive. " Last week, his doctor kept him in the house the day before the race because he had a cold, but at lunch he felt well enough to eat half a broiled milk-fed chicken on toast , potatoes supreme , green peas , Waldorf salad , buttered rolls, assorted cakes, an ice, and a demitasse. Said he: "I am. here to have a jolly good time . . . . Keep out of alliances. . . . More people have been ruined in England by my betting tips than anything else. ... In India we are only standing between two factions of natives who would fly at each other's throats if we were not there. . . . For 447 years my people have called it 'Darby'. . . ."

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