"He's a Freak"

A Negro groom stroked the colt's nose, trying to cairn him down while Trainer Eddie Neloy tightened the saddle girth. Looking on, a girl with yellow hair wanted to know why the horse was carrying 132 Ibs., like the program said, when everybody knows that a jockey only weighs 110 or so. "Lead weights," somebody said. "They stuff the saddle full of lead weights." Somebody else laughed. "This horse, they probably use gold bars instead."

Gun Bow was golden, all right. A sudden summer shower had turned the track at Chicago's Arlington Park slow and sloppy--but that did not bother him a bit. Neither did the fact that he had to concede up to 23 Ibs. to eleven of the best handicap horses in the Midwest. The big bay made a shambles of the $114,750 Washington Handicap two Saturdays ago. Leaping in front at the start, he stayed there all the way--fighting off four separate challenges, drawing out by two lengths at the wire. "A lot of horses found out they could catch Gun Bow today," said his proud groom afterward, "but they was out of breath when they got there."

Better than Liniment. Gun Bow is a race horse calculated to take anybody's breath away. A strapping (16 hands) four-year-old, he was bred by Elizabeth Arden Graham, the cosmetics manufacturer, who insists on rubbing Ardena cold cream on her horses' legs (she claims that it is better than liniment). Sired by the stallion Gun Shot, who broke down before he could prove his racing potential, foaled by an undistinguished War Admiral mare, Gun Bow showed practically nothing as a two-year-old. Last year he won six races and a respectable $41,292. Faced with the necessity of making her Maine Chance Farm show a profit in 1963 (in order to avoid federal tax penalties), Mrs. Graham sold Gun Bow last December to New Jersey's Harry Albert and Mrs. John Stanley--for $125,000. The new owners called themselves Gedney Farm (for tax reasons of their own) and turned the horse over to Trainer Neloy.

It took Gun Bow just three trips to the track to win back his purchase price. A victory in the San Fernando Stakes at Santa Anita last January was worth $26,125; the C. H. Strub Stakes brought in $87,500 more and the San Antonio Handicap added another $36,200. But that was just the beginning. So far this year, Gun Bow has accounted for seven major stakes and swelled his bankroll by $440,870.

Looping the Field. The way he goes about winning makes the victories even gaudier. In July's $100,000 Brooklyn Handicap at Aqueduct, Gun Bow galloped 1 1/4 miles in 1 min. 593/5 sec.--the fastest mile-and-a-quarter in the history of New York racing. He won by twelve lengths. In the $54,300 Whitney Stakes at Saratoga last month, Gun Bow was unruly in the gate, broke dead last. Charging after the field, he suddenly spotted a leaf on the track, set himself like a steeplechaser approaching a hedge, and jumped. Then he settled down to business. He looped the field on the clubhouse turn, and the applause had already started when he swept around the final turn into the stretch, leading by three lengths. Jockey Walter Blum gave him a quick flick with the whip ("I don't pull up no horses when we're running for 50 big ones," he explained later) and found himself holding on for dear life. Gun Bow's margin at the wire: a widening ten lengths. Sighed Rival Jockey Bill Boland, whose own mount, Sunstruck, finished a full city block up the track: "When that horse runs his race, there's nothing alive can catch him. He's a freak."

By last week the freak was an odds-on favorite for yet another honor: the title of Horse of the Year, monopolized for four seasons by Mrs. Richard C. duPont's great gelding Kelso--whom Gun Bow will meet in the $100,000 added Aqueduct Stakes on Labor Day. (Last week Kelso demonstrated that he was ready for the encounter by tying the American record for 1 1/8miles on the turf in a warm-up race at Saratoga.) Gun Bow had also changed owners again. Keeping a 40% interest for themselves, Albert and Mrs. Stanley sold the other 60% for $600,000 to a syndicate headed by John R. Gaines, heir to a dog-food fortune. Another syndicate member: Mrs. Elizabeth Arden Graham, who happily shelled out $100,000 for 10% of the same colt she sold nine months ago for $125,000.

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