St. Edward of Lexington

(See front cover)

At Havre de Grace, Md., last week, Mrs. Isabella Dodge Sloane's long-striding, brown colt Cavalcade thundered first to the wire to snatch the Shenandoah Purse ($1,000 added).

At Jamaica, L. I. three days later, her big colt High Quest finished a length in front of the field, J. H. Louchheim's Speedmore coming second and Mrs. Payne Whitney's Spy Hill third in the Wood Memorial Stakes ($5,000 added).

Same day at Havre de Grace, in the Chesapeake Stakes ($7,500 added), speedy Cavalcade clipped 2/5 sec. off the track record, won handily from Mrs. Frank J. Heller's Agrarian and Alfred G. Vanderbilt's Discovery.

Exciting as these performances were for rich, socialite Mrs. Sloane, hospitalized in Manhattan from a hip injury sustained while bathing at Palm Beach last winter, their importance lay in the fact that they rang down the curtain on the preliminary spring races for 3-year-olds. All weather-vanes on all U. S. racing stables now pointed abruptly toward Louisville, Ky. Thither was shipped in padded motor vans and horse Pullmans every 3-year-old filly, colt and gelding in the land worth its oats. There, at Churchill Downs this week, the nation's 1934 racing season would formally open with the 60th annual running of the Kentucky Derby.

The Race. The Kentucky Derby is not the oldest U. S. horse race. Saratoga's Travers Stakes was first run in 1864. The Derby, with its added money reduced this year from $50,000 to $30,000, does not offer the richest stakes. More lucrative for horse owners are the Belmont Futurity (between $80,000 and $90,000) and the Belmont Stakes (some $60,000). Better fields of older horses are to be seen on many a track, and there are those who believe that the Belmont Stakes, run in June by a slightly more mature and smaller selection of horses, offers a more distinguished group of 3-year-olds than the Derby. But the Kentucky Derby is more than a horse race. It is a U. S. institution. If you have been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and to Louisville on Derby Day, you have celebrated two of the country's greatest fiestas.

The man who is responsible for making the Derby the racing classic of the American continent also has the distinction of having seen every Derby ever run. In 1875, 14-year-old Matt Winn sat in his father's grocery wagon and watched Aristides win the race. Grocery Boy Matt Winn became Matt Winn, merchant tailor of Covington, Ky. Twenty years ago, Tailor Matt Winn became Colonel Matt J. Winn, racetrack manager. In 1914 he upped the Derby's purse, steadily began to ballyhoo the race into a social and sporting extravaganza. Now, 73, Colonel Winn as president of the American Turf Association operates not only Churchill Downs at Louisville, but Latonia, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, as well as Lincoln Fields and Washington Park outside Chicago.

Derby Day this year finds Churchill Downs physically about the same. The vast old gimcrack wooden stands have had a touch of paint and a little repair has been done on the fences which separate Louisville's most noted establishment from the mean little houses of one of its least attractive sections. In tune with the times, a cafe and bar have been added; admission prices are down 33 1/3% to 50%. But for the first time since 1930, a sell-out is forecast for the Derby. Vice President & Mrs. Garner from horsy Texas and NRAdministrator Johnson, oldtime cavalryman, are scheduled to head the list of celebrities attending the race. "It looks like old times, and the Depression is drawing to a close," confidently observed Colonel Winn from the swivel chair in his office at the track last week.

Already Louisville was filling up with early comers, who beguiled themselves with the six days of racing week precede the Derby. But the topic which agitated everyone in town from the youngest bell hop at the Brown Hotel to booming President Whitefoord R. Cole of Louisville & Nashville R. R. was: which 20-odd of the 124 Derby eligibles would go to the barrier on Saturday? Which one would for 1 1/4 mi. run faster than any other, have a horseshoe of roses hung round its neck by the Governor of Kentucky, its name painted beside its 59 predecessors on the pillars of the Churchill Downs pergola, its fame recorded in racing history?

The Horses. Every Derby nominee has its loyal coterie of sentimentalists and hunch-players. But in the past decade, a rank outsider has won just once. Handicappers, form-players and "hard boots" consequently narrowed their choice among five horses:

Singing Wood, a bay colt, is the best of Mrs. John Hay ("Jock") Whitney's three candidates. Mrs. Whitney's sporting mother-in-law, Mrs. Payne Whitney, tops the mass entry list with five nominees; her husband's cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney has four, but no other Whitney horse compares with Singing Wood. Last year he won the Futurity, was top money 2-year-old with $88,050 winnings.

Cavalcade, Mrs. Sloane's colt, prepared for his pair of spectacular victories last week by beating Singing Wood in the Hyde Park Stakes last year. But still other Derby material, notably Bazaar and Discovery, have shown heels to Cavalcade. Mrs. Sloane's High Quest is not entered in the Derby, but she may have three more horses in the race.

Sir Thomas, a poor man's horse, belongs to Alexander Gordon of Louisville, onetime trainer for Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt and Cartoonist Bud Fisher. Sir Thomas finished his two-year-old season a "maiden," never having won a race. But had he not jumped a path on the course at the Futurity, observers say he would have beaten Singing Wood. Form-players can justify their fancy for Sir Thomas by recalling that Sir Barton in 1919 and Broker's Tip last year entered the Derby as ''maidens."

Mata Hari is a brown filly owned by Charles T. Fisher (Bodies). She won five out of her eight starts last year, among them the Lassie Stakes, Breeders' Futurity and the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes, a stepping stone for such Derby winners as Twenty Grand. Point against her is that she is nervous in large fields, is said to be "so inbred she is her own aunt."

A Derby would not be a Derby without an entry by Colonel Edward Riley Bradley, whose green and white colors have come out on top more than those of any other owner: four times, twice in succession. Best of his possible entries this year is a big brown filly named Bazaar.

Last week Colonel Bradley, an erect old gentleman with a tall hard collar and high black shoes, was already on hand at Churchill Downs to inspect his horses and, incidentally, to watch two of them. Barn Swallow and Tick On, come in second and third in the Clark Handicap, first day's feature at the track and a race as old as the Derby.

Colonel Bradley had already picked the Derby winners month before in Washington at a Senate hearing regarding the appointment of a New Orleans revenue collector: Singing Wood, Sir Thomas, Cavalcade, in that order. That did not mean, however, that he was not eager for Bazaar to win. She took third money as a 2-year-old, won the Hopeful Stakes, ran down Cavalcade in the Jenkins Memorial at Laurel before retiring for the winter.

Only one filly ever won the derby, Regret (1915), owned by the late Harry Payne Whitney. Fortnight ago, Regret died of an internal hemorrhage at Lexington, aged 22. And to all who talked to him last week, Colonel Bradley repeated his axiom: "Fillies are no good in the spring." For physiological reasons, it is hard to keep them in training. But everyone around the stables knew that largely due to Bazaar's, Mata Hari's and Wise Daughter's successes, among 2-year-olds 1933 had been "a filly year." They also knew that Kentucky's foxiest and most renowned horseman was hell-bent on another victorious drink out of the old Derby cup.

The Colonel. For years newspaper feature-writers have refrained from writing Edward Riley Bradley's biography, partly because the Colonel is notoriously secretive about his past, but chiefly because the mere mention of his occupation amounts to libel in most states. Colonel Bradley is a gambler and has been for some 50 of his 75 years. Colonel Bradley himself stilled apprehensive editors' anxieties at the Senate hearing last month when he frankly admitted that his business was that of a "speculator, raiser of race horses and gambler." "I'd gamble on anything," he added.

One of three brothers, Colonel Bradley was born at Johnstown, Pa. His father, Captain Hugh Bradley, was an Irishman who had fought in the Civil War. Young "Ed'' first worked as a roller in a steel mill. He quit that job, went West. There legend records him as a gold miner, cowboy, friend of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, a scout for General Nelson A. Miles in his campaigns against the Apaches. He served his apprenticeship in the gambling and horse-racing business in Texas and at Juarez, Mexico, before starting a bookmaking partnership. After seasons at Hot Springs, St. Louis and Memphis tracks he branched out on his own in Chicago during the old World's Fair.

In 1898 Colonel Bradley bought his first race horse, Friar John. His second, Bad News, which won 54 times out of 185 starts, was the first of his string of "B" horses.

The Colonel had established a gaming place in St. Augustine, Fla., with his brother John, when Promoter Henry M. Flagler suggested that his budding social colony at Palm Beach needed a place to risk its money. Bradley's celebrated Beach Club was opened in 1898. In its 36 years, rare is the U. S. Big Name which has not applied for a guest card. The Beach Club is a large homey collection of white frame buildings on Lake Worth, not far from the yellow railway station where many of its visitors put their private cars on sidings. It is chartered to operate as a private organization to run a buffet "and such games of amusement as the managers and members may from time to time agree on." The games of amusement reputedly net Colonel Bradley $1,000,000 per year, although the receipts have been lower since Depression and last year the croupiers and other attendants took a cut. Nevertheless, the Beach Club has been sufficiently profitable to permit Edward Riley Bradley, first citizen of Palm Beach and a devout Catholic, to build a magnificent church one block away. Its realistic donor was not displeased when the shrine was named St. Edward's.

Colonel Bradley first leased, then bought the 400-acre Idle Hour Farm in the heart of the Kentucky blue-grass country near Lexington, later acquiring another 600 acres. The Beach Club pays for this establishment. "My stables keep me poor," says Colonel Bradley. "I can't afford to run them. They cost me $30,000 a month year in and year out, and only in two years have my horses' earnings run as high as $200,000."

Calculating in his speculations, Colonel Bradley hesitates at no extravagance where his horses are concerned. When they die, marble headstones mark their graves in a well-kept cemetery. Their stables are of Colonial architecture and stalls are fitted with Vita-Glass. Some of the Colonel's equine innovations, however, have been less successful than others. When he heard about streamlining and wind-resistance, he experimented with little hoods to be strapped on his horses' heads. More disastrous was his notion, abetted by an Akron (Ohio) oculist, that horses with defective vision would run better if equipped with glasses. Result was a large bill and one disabled jockey, the rider of the first terrified mount in spectacles. But to Colonel Bradley goes credit for introducing the fibre skullcap, first worn by his jockeys, now used by all to prevent serious head injuries in falls.

Childless and widowed, Colonel Bradley turns out the best of his horses once a year for the celebrated Orphans' Day meet at his farm. To the orphans, his guests, he is St. Edward indeed, for the meet is well attended, makes some $30,000 for charity.

Manager of Idle Hour Farm is Barry Shannon, brother of Bradley's old bookmaking partner. His trainer is H. J. ("Dick") Thompson, who has won for his employer more than $2,350,000 in stakes, practically every big U. S. racing event and four Derbies with Behave Yourself (1921), Bubbling Over (1926), Burgoo King (1932), Broker's Tip (1933). But the Colonel can, and has when Thompson was sick, trained his own horses himself. His brother John, after a career of big-game hunting and backing Explorer Frederick A. ("Doc") Cook, retired from their joint affairs to a Western ranch. Brother Garvey, onetime big-league ballplayer, was never associated with the Colonel.

Besides owning horses, Colonel Bradley has owned tracks. He spent more than $1,000,000 improving the Fair Grounds at New Orleans, sold out in 1932 and bought heavily into Joseph E. Widener's Hialeah Park at Miami. His feelings about horses themselves are a strange mixture of sentimentality and practicality. "I love horses," he says, "and I'll always breed them. They're like children, needing the same care and treatment, subject to all sons of ailments. . . ." He thinks he was fondest of a filly named Bit of White, whose only claim to fame was a track record at Louisville. "She was like a bit of Dresden china, a friendly, intelligent, perfectly mannered little lady."

And yet, having made a big book against Morvich in the 1922 Derby, he started his Busy American against his veterinarian's and trainer's advice. The horse had developed an injured tendon. "He might just as well break down now as later in the season," said the Colonel. Busy American led the field for a quarter-mile, then broke down, ruined for life.

As widely famed a gambler as a horse owner, Colonel Bradley lives up to his reputation. He will bet you it will or will not rain tomorrow. All bets are recorded by his personal commissioner, Mose Cossman, 30 years in his service, for whom he once named a horse Bet Mose. At Saratoga, when the yearlings are displayed, Colonel Bradley habitually offers even money that any horse you name will not win a purse the following year. In 1932 some one picked The Triumvir, for which Mrs. Payne Whitney had paid the highest price of the year, but Colonel Bradley won just the same.

Occasionally he offers wholesale wagers in the wrong company. At his Beach Club in 1923 he offered anyone 5-to-1 that a sure starter in the Derby, three months away, could not be named. Up spoke Harry Sinclair and Joshua S. Cosden, asking for $5,000 worth apiece. Both had Derby eligibles, and although their horses had run last in the Preakness week before the Derby, both delightedly posted the $500 entry fee to send them to the barrier. Mr. Sinclair's Zev came in No. 1, Mr. Cosden's Martingale was No. 2.

Another hard bet for Colonel Bradley to lose was his wager that the War would end Nov. 15, 1918.

The Colonel's one ruling obsession is that all things, good or bad, happen in threes. Once at Latonia three accidents occurred. The Colonel offered 4-to-1 that not another mishap would occur during the meeting. He was right. If he has a bad year, he is sure two more are coming. He feels the same way about good years.

His superstition had Colonel Bradley in a tight corner last week. A train of threes had run its course in 1932 when he won the Derby for the third time. Then in 1933 two miracles happened to him at once: he won the Derby for the fourth time and for the second time in succession, unheard of in the race's history. What Colonel Bradley was hoping against hope for last week was that a new sequence of fortunate threes had been started which would terminate in Bazaar's victory this week. The prayers of every loyal Kentuckian, whose bet is traditionally "Bradley across the board," were raised that St. Edward of Lexington might somehow work another horse-racing miracle.

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