Luck and Mrs. Mars
Bunched at the first turn, the field strung out in the back stretch with Special Agent in front at the half mile, Sangreal at the three-quarter. Sangreal was still ahead coming into the stretch when Jockey Peters, moving up on Goldeneye, made his bid. For a split second, it looked like a camera finish. Then Sangreal weakened and Goldeneye drew away--to a six-length lead at the wire, with Sangreal second, Ariel Cross third.
The race was the Christmas Stakes, feature of the first day of the winter meeting at Santa Anita Park, near Los Angeles. A crowd of 40,000, including not only cinema notables but scores of leading turf people from all over the country, watched Goldeneye's victory. It was the second $5,000 Christmas Stakes purse in a row for his owner, Albert Anthony Baroni, whose Top Row, after winning it last year, went on to win the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap in February.
Properly speaking, the 1936 racing season ends Jan. 1, when all U. S. racehorses, by Jockey Club rule, become a year older. Unofficially, the start of the Santa Anita meeting marked the start of the 1937 season. With no super-horse to attract special attention, the 1936 season went on record as horse racing's most prosperous year. In 15 states that permit pari-mutuel betting, $1,000,000,000 changed hands. Leading jockey of the year was Basil James, with 239 winners through last week. Leading trainer was the onetime pigeon fancier, Hirsch Jacobs (TIME, Oct. 26), with 173 winners. Leading horse of the year was Granville, who won $110,000. And the most extraordinary records of the racing year were those of two utterly dissimilar race horse owners. One was 24-year-old Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. The other was Sangreal's owner, Mrs. Ethel Mars, whose failure to win last week did nothing to impair her standing as far & away the most successful owner of the year.
In 1936, Mrs. Mars's Milky Way stable won a total of $206,450. Alfred Vanderbilt was second with $159,545. When the year started, young Mr. Vanderbilt was considered likely to repeat his record of 1935 as leading money winner. In an article published by Peter Vischer's Horse & Horseman, Turfman Vanderbilt last month related some of the reasons why he failed to do so.
Early last spring, he received a mysterious letter from a stranger who demanded $2,500 and seven old shirts in return for his "unbeatable" system of betting on the races, threatened Turfman Vanderbilt with bad luck unless he complied by May 30. Turfman Vanderbilt ignored the letter. On May 30, Cherry Orchard fell at the start, breaking his jockey's collarbone. Airilame was defeated for the first time, and all three Vanderbilt entries in a third race inexplicably failed to live up to expectations. At Saratoga, an epidemic of coughing ruined the chances of the promising Vanderbilt string of two-year-olds. Then Good Harvest ran a piece of timber through his chest that killed him. Discovery, theretofore the most dependable horse in the U. S.. ran so badly he had to be retired. Last week, at Santa Anita's opening, Vanderbilt horses failed to finish in the money.
In the notoriously uncertain pastime of racing horses, the unvarying success of Mrs. Ethel Mars has been only less surprising than the ups & downs which preceded it during her 25 years in the food business. Mrs. Mars's stables are named after the Milky Way candy bar made by the Chicago company which she inherited when her husband died in 1934. Four separate Mars candy ventures prospered and crashed before Mr. & Mrs. Mars finally arrived at the recipe for Milky Ways in 1923. In one year, Mars sales jumped from $72,000 to $800,000. By 1933, Mars, Inc. was producing 40% of all U. S. chocolate-covered candy bars--150,000,000 lb., grossing some $25,000,000 a year.
In 1933, Frank Mars bought a string of 20 race horses. Wondering what to do with the horses after his death, Mrs. Mars decided to race them. In 1935 Mrs. Mars's horses won $107,565 and Mrs. Mars amazed the sporting world by spending $108,000 for 29 yearlings at the Saratoga sales. Famed Colonel E. R. Bradley has a standing offer to bet even money that any yearling a horseman cares to name will not win a race the next year. Mrs. Mars's 1935 yearlings turned out to include not one but almost every good 1936 two-year-old except Pompoon. Last sum mer, by spending a total of $131,000 for yearlings at Saratoga, Mrs. Mars gave rise to rumors that Mars, Inc.'s advertis ing budget was financing Milky Way Farms.
Whether or not Mars, Inc. pays for it directly as well as indirectly, the Milky Way stable is its chief publicity asset. Mrs. Mars's racing colors (orange, brown and white) were suggested by the vanilla & caramel centre and chocolate coating of a Milky Way. Nation's Taste, Mrs. Mars's favorite 1935 yearling, was named after a radio contest in which first prize was $2,000 or the horse's gross winnings. When she chose the $2,000, the winner made a mistake. Nation's Taste has so far won $8,050.
About the uncertain candy business, Mrs. Mars is hardheaded and unsentimental. About the staid and profitable enterprise of horse racing, she is wildly superstitious. Before every race, she pulls four hairs from the tail of each horse entered. If the hairs pull easily, it is a sign that the horse will win. She is not secretive about her system of buying yearlings--if she likes a horse's head and stern, she takes it for granted that what lies between will be satisfactory.
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