Sport: Eton Blue and Brown

On Long Island, in Maryland, and the West. 47 sleek racehorses took their morning gallops as usual last week. On a big farm near Lexington, Ky. 100 brood mares and eight famed stallions passed days of pleasure and tranquillity. At Brookdale. N. J. 30 yearlings tried their long thin legs against the time when they would be raced as two-year-olds. All were horses belonging to the stable of Harry Payne Whitney, and the men who took care of them were wondering what their fate was to be. For their master was dead (TIME, Nov. 3) and it seemed possible that the Whitney colors, Eton blue and brown, made notable more than 50 years ago by grandfather William Collins Whitney, might disappear from the turf. Everything depended on what Mr. Whitney’s son and heir, Cornelius Vanderbilt (“Sonny”) Whitney would do. Two days after his father’s death he had suggested that he might keep the stable going. Last week came his formal announcement—an application to the Jockey Club for permission to race under his father’s colors. Said Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney: “I intend to continue the breeding and racing interests of my late father. In accordance with his expressed wishes I expect to start Equipoise in the Pimlico Futurity.”

Since he rowed bow on the Yale crew of 1922, “Sonny” Whitney has been more interested in polo than racing. His various directorates and his interests in Aviation Corp. of the Americas have left him plenty of time to work up a four-goal polo game—good enough to get him into Long Island’s intersectional tournaments and the Waterbury Cup matches. He used to go to Belmont and Aqueduct with his father sometimes but, unlike his cousin John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney who goes abroad to watch his horse run in the Grand National, “Sonny” Whitney seldom traveled far from home to see a horse race. Last Spring for the first time he began to talk about the family stable with enthusiasm. He will keep his father’s shrewd trainer, Thomas J. Healey.