Spendthrift's Purchase

When they wager that one horse can run faster than another, most horseplayers worry about one race at a time. Leslie Combs II of Lexington, Ky. faced a somewhat different problem. The horse of his choice would be an odds-on favorite almost any time it ran. The question was not whether it would win, but how much it would make for its owner. It had already earned nearly $1,000,000; Combs estimated that it would romp home with another $450,000 before it slowed down. After that, Combs figured, the horse would earn some $800,000 more at stud. Just in case some other well-heeled horseman came up with the same answers, Combs added $1,200 for good luck. Then he put in a sealed bid for $1,251,200 on Nashua, pride of the late Sportsman William Woodward Jr., whose Belair Stud stable went on the auction block after he was accidentally shot and killed by his wife (TIME, Nov. 7).

If others agreed with Combs's generous calculations, they lacked the cash of their convictions. When the Woodward estate executors opened the bids on Belair Stud last week, Combs had bought himself a horse. He will be paying the highest price a thoroughbred has ever brought in the history of racing.* The other 61 horses in Belair Stud went for a total of $615,000.

To Nashua, all this high finance means little. Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, dean of American trainers, will continue to have the 1955 Horse of the Year in his charge; the only difference will be that from now on Nashua will race under the orange-and-blue silks of Combs's Spendthrift Farm. It will, that is, when Combs gets up exactly $1,126,080 (the original bid required only a certified check for 10% of the purchase price). To Combs, this should present no problem. Left end on the famed "Praying Colonels" of Centre College (1920-22), he worked his way up through polo playing and coal-mine operating to expanding the family fortune at Spendthrift. Besides, says Combs, he will not have to foot the bill alone. He was front man for a syndicate that includes five others.

* Next highest: $700,000, paid for the Aga Khan's Tulyar by the Irish National Stud in 1952.

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