Harness Racing: A Bond Named Bret

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Man o' War was a great horse, but he still lost a race. Native Dancer was also beaten once, and Kelso now loses almost as often as he wins. A ticket on Bret Hanover, though, is more like a U.S. Treasury bond than a bet. A hulking, 1,100-lb. colt who sleeps like a baby (ten hours a day), eats like an elephant (twelve quarts of oats a day) and is hooked on peppermint drops, Bret Hanover has been to the post 28 times and won every race—by the total margin of 100-lengths.

Get Up & Go. Bret's record is the more astonishing because he is a pacer and does his racing in harness, towing a two-wheeled cart and driver behind.* Handicapping harness horses is every bit as confusing as rating thoroughbred "flat" racers, and even then there are dozens of ways for the best horse to lose. He can get caught in a "blind switch"—boxed in by opponents' sulkies. He may be startled by the flick of the whip into "breaking"—going off stride. He can be "hung" wide on the turns and lose too much ground to make up. Or he may simply draw an impossible post position—far on the outside, or in the second row.

At Lexington, Ky., last year, a brass band cut loose as Bret Hanover was warming up for a race. He bolted, flung Trainer-Driver Frank Ervin, 60, over the infield rail, and fell on top of him. Ervin got up and went to the hospital with a wrenched back, a damaged kidney and a pinched intestine. Bret got up—and won by four lengths with a substitute driver. Last month, in the $125,236 Cane Futurity at New York's Yonkers Raceway, another horse broke stride on the first turn and caromed off Bret's sulky. "I almost went into orbit," shuddered Ervin, after crossing the finish line 31 lengths in front.

Two weeks ago, in Roosevelt Raceway's $35,800 Commodore Pace, Ervin had a scare of a different sort: at the halfway point, a rival ranged up to take the lead. But Bret responded with a burst of speed that carried him across the finish line three-quarters of a length in front. His time for the mile: 1 min. 59 2/5 sec.—a new track record. By comparison, last week's $21,434 Matron Stake at Michigan's Wolverine Raceway was strictly a breeze: ripping through the last 1 mile in 29 sec. flat, Bret whinnied all the way to a six-length victory.

Four Under Two. Sired by the great stallion Adios, whose sons and daughters have won more than $14 million, Bret owes his name to the fact that he was bred by Pennsylvania's Hanover Shoe Farms, which is owned by the board chairman of Hanover Shoe Co., and has been producing champions for 39 years. A Cleveland coal broker, Richard Downing, paid $50,000 for the colt at a yearling sale in 1963, turned him over to Trainer Ervin, who was on the verge of retiring after more than 5,500 victories on the track. Ervin took the budding pacer for a spin, and changed his plans.