Sport: From Missouri

Most of the 60,000 racing fans who jammed historic old Churchill Downs last week for the 64th running of the Kentucky Derby looked down their rosy noses at a big, rugged colt from Missouri named Lawrin. In the first place, he was not bred in fashionable Kentucky or Maryland, like the nine other three-year-olds who were parading to the post for the mile-and-a-quarter race. What was more, he was a “winter horse” (one who campaigns at tracks that operate during the winter)— and only one winter horse had ever won the Derby.

Fabulous Stagehand, winter-book favorite for this year’s Kentucky Derby (after he had won both the Santa Anita Derby and the Santa Anita Handicap in California last winter), had apparently passed his peak. In the Derby Trial Stakes at Churchill Downs four days before the big race, he was beaten by two of his lightly regarded contemporaries, and subsequently scratched from the Derby because of a sore throat.*

Forming long queues at the 500 parimutuel windows scattered around the Downs last week, amateur handicappers, who would have been playing Stagehand, were getting their money down fast on last fortnight’s Wood Memorial winner, Fighting Fox, full brother of Gallant Fox. 1930 Derby winner. Kentucky hard boots liked Bull Lea, who had broken two track records in his two races at local Keeneland this spring. Hollywood visitors (like Joan Bennett, Jack Pearl, Joe E. Brown) made sentimental bets on Myron Selznick’s Can’t Wait. Long-shot players took a chance on Elooto, named after Owner William O’Toole, and hoped he would not run in reverse like his name. Only a sprinkling backed Lawrin, the hillbilly colt, even though he had won the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah Park last winter and had beaten Stagehand in the Derby Trial Stakes last week., But if they were not impressed with the colt from Missouri, railbirds should have placed more confidence in the smartest jockey of the year, Kentucky-born Eddie Arcaro, who had the leg up on Lawrin. Determined to win his first Kentucky Derby, 23-year-old Jockey Arcaro rode the race he planned. Drawing the No. 1 post position, he kept Lawrin close to the rail, stuck in the ruck until he found his opening. Coming into the stretch, he pulled out in front—three, four, five lengths— shot across the finish line a full length ahead of William du Pont’s fast closing Dauber. Can’t Wait was third. Favorites Fighting Fox and Bull Lea finished out of the money.

Rushing over to lead in the winner, Owner Herbert Maurice Woolf, a Kansas City clothier famed as a breeder of show horses, was so elated that he pranced like one of his colts, swung his binoculars above his head in circles, pumped the hand of Jockey Arcaro again & again. Not only had Owner Woolf won the $47,000 first-place money and a $5,000 gold cup, but he had bet heavily and forehandedly on his Missouri colt—whose sire he had picked up for $500. Placing substantial wagers in the winter books (as high as 20-to-1) and in the parimutuels at Churchill Downs as well. Owner Woolf was reported to have cleaned up $150,000—the biggest killing since the days when Colonel Edward R. Bradley, four-time Derby winner, used to plunge on his own horses. To dazed little Eddie Arcaro Owner Woolf gave an extra bonus of $2,500 in addition to the usual 10% of the first-prize money. All Lawrin got was a necklace of roses.

-Because in winter-book betting a player loses his money when a horse is scratched, bookmakers last week pocketed $1,000,000 that was wagered on Stagehand.