Sport: It Pays to Be Pessimistic

Morose-looking Owner Ralph Verhurst sat outside a stall in Stable C at Chicago's Sportsman's Park one night last week and gazed critically at an eight-year-old brown mare named Proximity. He shifted his unlit cigar, his 225-lb. bulk, got up slowly and fed the mare a lump of sugar. He was asked, "How does she look?" Belgian-born Ralph Verhurst, who has been trotting Proximity since she was a three-year-old, was characteristically pessimistic: "Bad, bad. I don't think she's got it." Owner Verhurst happily turned out to be wrong.

When the time came for the first heat of the $15,000 Sportsman's Trot, Verhurst harnessed Proximity to her 36-lb. sulky, turned the rest of the job over to Driver Clint Hodgins, 37, who had flown from Manhattan for the race. At the start, Proximity spurted to the rail slot, was unchallenged until the final stretch turn of the two-lap mile heat. There, the 1948 Hambletonian winner, Demon Hanover, started pressing. Hodgins felt Demon Hanover coming, whipped Proximity hard. She outlasted the bid, won by a head.

The winner's share of the purse was small: $3,750. But to Owner Verhurst and Proximity it was a big one. The money brought Proximity's race earnings to $208,629, breaking the alltime trotting record of $206,462, set by Goldsmith Maid in 1877.* Proximity's time: 2:05 2/5, bettering the old track record of 2 :06 3/5.

Before the second heat of the race (at a mile-and-a-sixteenth), Verhurst was asked whether he had bet on his horse. Said Verhurst: "Hell, no. She's liable to lose." This time Verhurst was right. Proximity lost by a neck to Demon Hanover, won $1,500 second place money. Verhurst seemed almost pleased: "There, see, I told you she'd lose." It was Proximity's second defeat in 14 heats this year.