Big Red's 25th

If ever a U.S. horse attains the immortality of Bellerophon's Pegasus or Don Quixote's Rosinante, surely it will be Samuel D. Riddle's Man o' War. This Sunday, at Faraway Farm in Lexington, Ky., "Big Red" reaches the grand old age of 25--an age comparable to three-score and ten for a man--and without a grey hair to show for it.

Owner Riddle has planned no birthday celebration; he had a big one four years ago when Big Red was made an honorary citizen of Lexington. To thousands and thousands of racing fans, whose hearts used to bump faster at the mere mention of Big Red's name, this passover will seem a crying shame.

But racing fans may spare their tears. Big Red leads the life of Reilly, is king of a 968-acre demesne in Kentucky's lush, warm Blue Grass country, is stalled in a luxury stable, with attendants to come a-running at his every sneeze and snort. Since settling down at stud some 20 years ago, he has attracted visitors on the scale of the Dionne Quintuplets. Herbert Haseltine, who once sculped the carriage horse of Britain's Queen Alexandra, is at work on a model for a bronze statue of Big Red. A typical Big Red day:

Four-thirty a.m.: breakfast; 5:30 a.m.: exercised for five or six miles, then cleaned and groomed; if he has no mare to serve that day he lolls around in his stall from 9 to 11, then lunch; 12:30 p.m. to 4: more lolling; 4:30 p.m.: cleaned and fed again (eats oats, bran, Nevada hay and a mixture of timothy and clover); then tucked into the barn for the night.

A feminine admirer once gaped at Big Red's magnificent glossy coat. "Why doesn't my hair look like that?" she asked. "Lady, yours don't get this much care and brushin'," the groom answered.

Big Red has money in his genes. Having a mare served by him costs the mare's owner $5,000, although occasionally Mr. Riddle, for the good of racing, waives the stud fee for poor owners of mares with fine strains. Through 1941 he has sired 335 registered foals. His get had won 1,069 races for $2,970,428. Some of his more brilliant offspring: American Flag, Crusader, War Admiral, Mars, Clyde Van Dusen, Bateau, Scapa Flow, War Glory, Genie and Battleship. Big Red was the famed Seabiscuit's grandpa. Though his weight is up a little and his back has sagged a trifle, he still has plenty of life in him: this year he will take care of from ten to a dozen mares.

In his two years of racing, Man o' War lost only one race. He established records for the mile, mile and an eighth, mile and three-eighths, mile and a half, mile and five-eighths. Despite the fact that modern tracks are faster (because of better maintenance methods), he still holds the U.S. record for the mile and five-eighths (2:404/5; with 126 pounds up) and the world's record for the mile and three-eighths (2:141/5). In those two years he earned $249,465 for his owner. Had purses then been as large as they were later, it is calculated that he would have earned around $600,000.

When Will Harbut, Faraway Farm's No. 1 Negro valet de chambre, shows visitors around, he makes a pleasant spiel at each stall, but when he approaches Big Red's stable, which he always reserves till last, an awed hush comes into his voice: "Ladies and gen'men, heah is de mostest hawse in de world."

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