Sport: Kentucky Derby

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(See front cover)

The crowd kept quiet as the long line of thoroughbreds came out of the gate at Churchill Downs and moved slowly up the midway in the rain. Then they saw Earle Sande on Gallant Fox, seventh in line, and a few people shouted; Sande tipped his cap. Tannery, the horse that all the Southern sports were betting on, was 13th, and the band played "My Old Kentucky Home." Through the grey tissue of the rain it was hard to see what was happening at the post, but the patent stall-gate the starters were using speeded things up. In a minute the line of horses that had been relaxed and flexible in single file became a tight cordon between the fences, its component parts moving so nearly in unison that for a fraction of a second their movement seemed an illusion — that second in which the crowd took its breath to let out the abrupt blurred noise that meant the Derby had started.

High Foot was in front . That much was clear as the horses, digging inside toward the rail , formed an irregular phalanx. A few yards further on Alcibiades, the only filly in the race, passed High Foot and held the lead past the grandstand to the clubhouse turn. As they swung around the turn into the back stretch with a mile still to go, a big bay colt swung to the outside, gaining ground. It was Sande on Gallant Fox—an amazing, disdainful thing to do, for when a jockey swings outside so early in a race it shows he does not think much of the other horses. While Gallant Fox closed, Tannery was moving along the rail and soon these two with Alcibiades between them were running like a three-horse chariot team. Crack Brigade came on behind them. Alcibiades was the first to drop back; that left it up to Tannery, but Tannery could not hold the pace either. Gone Away and Gallant Knight were going strongest now, and the jockies on both of them were using the whip; Sande looked over his shoulder and gave Gallant Fox a cut, and although Gallant Fox was wide on the turn, the others, saving ground inside, did not gain. They still had to run the length of the stretch, when a ruddy gentleman sitting in a glass pagoda near the finish line brought his binoculars away from his eyes. With a throaty exclamation, he said, "Fine, I'm glad."'

Having thus complimented William Woodward, owner of Gallant Fox, who sat beside him in the pagoda, Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, took little further interest in the actual running. Although his conduct might have seemed odd in view of the fact that, urged by his friend Joseph E. Widener, he had come from England on the Aquitania expressly to be present during these 2 minutes and 7 seconds, a large fraction of which had still to elapse, he was quite in his senses. Himself a horseman, smart in the hunting field when he was younger, a breeder and trainer of racers, member of a family that has raced for centuries, he knew as soon as he saw the field challenge Gallant Fox in the backstretch and get stood off on the turn that it was all over. Chatting and smiling, he watched Gallant Fox come in first. Gallant Knight and Ned O finish second and third respectively, then went out in the rain to present Mr. Woodward with the Derby cup.

Edward George Villiers Stanley won a Derby himself once—The British Derby at Epsom, in 1924, with Sansovino. He gave the £11,000 stake money to his trainer. Winning this race, which