Sport: St. Edward of Lexington

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Derby Day this year finds Churchill Downs physically about the same. The vast old gimcrack wooden stands have had a touch of paint and a little repair has been done on the fences which separate Louisville's most noted establishment from the mean little houses of one of its least attractive sections. In tune with the times, a café and bar have been added; admission prices are down 33⅓% to 50%. But for the first time since 1930, a sell-out is forecast for the Derby. Vice President & Mrs. Garner from horsy Texas and NRAdministrator Johnson, oldtime cavalryman, are scheduled to head the list of celebrities attending the race. "It looks like old times, and the Depression is drawing to a close," confidently observed Colonel Winn from the swivel chair in his office at the track last week.

Already Louisville was filling up with early comers, who beguiled themselves with the six days of racing week precede the Derby. But the topic which agitated everyone in town from the youngest bell hop at the Brown Hotel to booming President Whitefoord R. Cole of Louisville & Nashville R. R. was: which 20-odd of the 124 Derby eligibles would go to the barrier on Saturday? Which one would for 1¼ mi. run faster than any other, have a horseshoe of roses hung round its neck by the Governor of Kentucky, its name painted beside its 59 predecessors on the pillars of the Churchill Downs pergola, its fame recorded in racing history?

The Horses. Every Derby nominee has its loyal coterie of sentimentalists and hunch-players. But in the past decade, a rank outsider has won just once. Handicappers, form-players and "hard boots" consequently narrowed their choice among five horses:

Singing Wood, a bay colt, is the best of Mrs. John Hay ("Jock") Whitney's three candidates. Mrs. Whitney's sporting mother-in-law, Mrs. Payne Whitney, tops the mass entry list with five nominees; her husband's cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney has four, but no other Whitney horse compares with Singing Wood. Last year he won the Futurity, was top money 2-year-old with $88,050 winnings.

Cavalcade, Mrs. Sloane's colt, prepared for his pair of spectacular victories last week by beating Singing Wood in the Hyde Park Stakes last year. But still other Derby material, notably Bazaar and Discovery, have shown heels to Cavalcade. Mrs. Sloane's High Quest is not entered in the Derby, but she may have three more horses in the race.

Sir Thomas, a poor man's horse, belongs to Alexander Gordon of Louisville, onetime trainer for Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt and Cartoonist Bud Fisher. Sir Thomas finished his two-year-old season a "maiden," never having won a race. But had he not jumped a path on the course at the Futurity, observers say he would have beaten Singing Wood. Form-players can justify their fancy for Sir Thomas by recalling that Sir Barton in 1919 and Broker's Tip last year entered the Derby as ''maidens."

Mata Hari is a brown filly owned by Charles T. Fisher (Bodies). She won five out of her eight starts last year, among them the Lassie Stakes, Breeders' Futurity and the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes, a stepping stone for such Derby winners as Twenty Grand. Point against her is that she is nervous in large fields, is said to be "so inbred she is her own aunt."