Sport: St. Edward of Lexington

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A Derby would not be a Derby without an entry by Colonel Edward Riley Bradley, whose green and white colors have come out on top more than those of any other owner: four times, twice in succession. Best of his possible entries this year is a big brown filly named Bazaar.

Last week Colonel Bradley, an erect old gentleman with a tall hard collar and high black shoes, was already on hand at Churchill Downs to inspect his horses and, incidentally, to watch two of them. Barn Swallow and Tick On, come in second and third in the Clark Handicap, first day's feature at the track and a race as old as the Derby.

Colonel Bradley had already picked the Derby winners month before in Washington at a Senate hearing regarding the appointment of a New Orleans revenue collector: Singing Wood, Sir Thomas, Cavalcade, in that order. That did not mean, however, that he was not eager for Bazaar to win. She took third money as a 2-year-old, won the Hopeful Stakes, ran down Cavalcade in the Jenkins Memorial at Laurel before retiring for the winter.

Only one filly ever won the derby, Regret (1915), owned by the late Harry Payne Whitney. Fortnight ago, Regret died of an internal hemorrhage at Lexington, aged 22. And to all who talked to him last week, Colonel Bradley repeated his axiom: "Fillies are no good in the spring." For physiological reasons, it is hard to keep them in training. But everyone around the stables knew that largely due to Bazaar's, Mata Hari's and Wise Daughter's successes, among 2-year-olds 1933 had been "a filly year." They also knew that Kentucky's foxiest and most renowned horseman was hell-bent on another victorious drink out of the old Derby cup.

The Colonel. For years newspaper feature-writers have refrained from writing Edward Riley Bradley's biography, partly because the Colonel is notoriously secretive about his past, but chiefly because the mere mention of his occupation amounts to libel in most states. Colonel Bradley is a gambler and has been for some 50 of his 75 years. Colonel Bradley himself stilled apprehensive editors' anxieties at the Senate hearing last month when he frankly admitted that his business was that of a "speculator, raiser of race horses and gambler." "I'd gamble on anything," he added.

One of three brothers, Colonel Bradley was born at Johnstown, Pa. His father, Captain Hugh Bradley, was an Irishman who had fought in the Civil War. Young "Ed'' first worked as a roller in a steel mill. He quit that job, went West. There legend records him as a gold miner, cowboy, friend of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, a scout for General Nelson A. Miles in his campaigns against the Apaches. He served his apprenticeship in the gambling and horse-racing business in Texas and at Juarez, Mexico, before starting a bookmaking partnership. After seasons at Hot Springs, St. Louis and Memphis tracks he branched out on his own in Chicago during the old World's Fair.

In 1898 Colonel Bradley bought his first race horse, Friar John. His second, Bad News, which won 54 times out of 185 starts, was the first of his string of "B" horses.