Sport: 63rd Derby

(See front cover)

Contrary to popular impression, the Kentucky Derby, in which a score of able U. S. three-year-old horses will this week race1¼ miles at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., is not the oldest, the richest or the best U. S. horse race. It is the most famed U. S. horse race and indubitably— in crowds, excitement, importance to the U. S. scene—the biggest. Last week the amiable, horsey city of Louisville was busy removing traces of the $52,000,000 damage left by last winter's flood in preparation for the one day in the year when it is the sporting capital of the U. S. For its 50,000 visitors, who it hopes will leave about $1,500,000 behind them, Louisville this week will provide a program aimed at making this 63rd Derby the noisiest, gayest, most profitable since Depression.

Derby Week starts Wednesday night, with a parade and pageant depicting Kentucky sports, followed by dancing in the streets. Thursday night's specialty this year was to be a tennis match between Ellsworth Vines and Fred Perry at the Jefferson County Armory. Friday night festivities were the Derby Eve Ball, an all-star wrestling program, and the annual reunion banquet & mint-julep shower of Kentucky Colonels. Saturday is the Derby.

Derby Day is the one day in the year when almost all the private railroad cars in the U. S. are in simultaneous use. Despite 50 such vehicles parked in Louisville railroad yards, roofs and beds in the city are always fabulously scarce. This year Louisville's Derby Festival Committee rounded up accommodations for 20,000 Derby refugees, in everything from $1 rooms to 12-room houses at $1,000 for the weekend. At Churchill Downs, main refuge during the flood which did it $8,000 damage, renovations this year include 3,000 new seats, 150 new boxes. With 70,000 paid spectators and 5,000 admitted free in the infield, the crowd should equal the biggest in Derby history. If, as anticipated, 24 horses should go to the post, this week's field would top the old 1928 record of 22. With the purse, reduced for the last three years, upped again to $50,000 added, the prize would also be an all-time record. What all Louisville's uproar boiled down to last week was the simple question: Who will get it?