Sport: Bully & the Beasts

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Miami's tourist season was a cortege of cold, corpse-grey days. Vacationers who checked in at the expensively cheap seaside palaces in hopes of getting sun with their sand were disappointed. But those who went South for another and more specific purpose were not disappointed: the ponies were running at Hialeah.

Even in Florida there are places where a dollar goes farther, and perhaps even some where it goes faster. But at the race track a man can get his money's worth. Tourist trimming stops at the gate. Whatever the weather, there is the bright sight of the silks rounding the turn and the convert-making thunder of thoroughbreds in a charge for the finish. There is also the base and altogether beautiful possibility of swift financial gain. A few hours spent studying past performances, a few dollars wagered wisely are said by some amateur gerontologists to be as healthful as fresh air and sunshine.

Amid Hialeah's flamingos last week a lot of horseplayers had a fine, healthful time watching, and a few had a fine, even more healthful time winning. When they looked up from their form sheets, they saw some of the finest thoroughbreds in the world. When they stepped up to bet, they could let their money ride with the country's winningest jockey. His name: William John Hartack Jr. If jockeys had their own colors, his would have to be red (for guts) and green (for money).

Three Years Running. As winter racing came alive with the big-stakes races that point the way north toward the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont, Willie Hartack began booting his way into the winner's circle with familiar regularity. Though he got off to an atrocious 1958 start (27 races without a first at Tropical Park), at Hialeah he is back in top form. One afternoon last week, for example, he turned in a superlative performance on Mrs. Allie Ruben's Stephanotis, kept the Irish-bred bay out of traffic trouble in a 16-horse field and won the $35,050 Bougainvillea Handicap by a widening length. Same day he brought in another winner and placed twice, pushing his record to 23 winners (plus 13 seconds, 11 thirds) out of 88 mounts in Hialeah's first 14 days. He is running at last year's pace—and last year's pace, a grand total of 341 firsts, including an alltime record of 43 stakes races, made Willie Hartack the No. 1 U.S. jockey. His horses ran off with a record $3,000,000, and the jockey's 10% pushed Hartack's gross income toward a comfortable $300,000. In only five years of racing, he had managed to top the field for three years running.

In the profession that gives the little man the reins, Jockey Hartack is now the biggest shrimp on the track. A dynamic, nicely proportioned (5 ft. 4 in., 111 lbs.) young man (25), Hartack works daily wonders with his extraordinarily sensitive hands and his uncanny communication with the reflexes of a running horse. His parlay of talents has already paid him with a jockey's dream: a swank new house in Miami Springs (midway between Tropical Park and Hialeah), an air-conditioned Cadillac, a speedboat, a big farm (in West Virginia). The calculating look of his eyes, the short forehead sloping away from a long brown pompadour, the narrow, impatient face and snappy, little-boyish swagger convey the presence of a winner.