Sport: Old Favorites

In the days of Pittsburgh Phil and Buffalo Bill, the No. 1 summer attraction for the country’s richest stables was the American Derby at Chicago’s Washington Park. Started in 1884 to show snooty Easterners that Chicago was no longer a frontier town, the American Derby offered an inaugural purse of $10,000, more than double what the older, tonier Kentucky Derby offered. By 1893, its purse was $50,000, more than ten times Kentucky’s. But, when panic hit its Pit, Chicago gave no thought to thoroughbreds, abandoned its Derby in 1905.

Last week, after taking it out of moth balls twice before when times were good, Chicago’s Washington Park—with all the fanfare of a Mardi Gras—staged a $62,000 revival of the American Derby, aimed to make it once more the richest three-year-old race in the U. S.

From East and West came the cream of the three-year-old crop: Colonel Edward Bradley’s Bimelech (winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes), Ethel Mars’s Gallahadion (who outran Big Bim to win the Kentucky Derby), Charles T. Fisher’s Sirocco (who beat Bimelech by ten lengths in the Arlington Classic). But it rained, Big Bim was scratched and Charles S. Howard’s Mioland, pride of the West Coast, made the other two look like plough horses. Splashing lickety-split through the mud, Mioland led all the way, finished three lengths in front of Sirocco, left 35,000 fans shaking their heads in bewilderment.

The man behind last week’s revival is 49-year-old Ben Lindheimer, Chicago real-estate operator who grew up within hollering distance of the original Washington Park. When he was seven, little Benny began to hang around the track, was given odd jobs such as checking the horses at the drinking trough on Derby day. Five years ago, Lindheimer’s persistent hobby got the better of him. Hearing that Colonel Matt Winn* wanted to sell Washington Park (gradually being overshadowed by Chicago’s newer, swankier Arlington Park), Lindheimer bought controlling interest in the track, became its managing director.

With stunts such as a patrons’ handicapping contest—a $5,000 prize awarded each Saturday to the fan picking the most winners—Lindheimer doubled attendance in five years, made a profit of $120,000 for his Washington Park Jockey Club last year.

Showman Lindheimer is determined to make Chicago again conspicuous in U. S. racing. In addition to renewing the American Derby, he has this year dug up another old favorite: marathon racing.

Students of bloodlines have long wailed that the U. S. thoroughbred is degenerating into a flashy sprinter. To please these students Washington Park is inaugurating a series of five distance races from 1½ to 4 miles.

In memory of his boyhood idols, Director Lindheimer has named these races after jockeys who made old Washington Park famous at the turn of the century: immortal Isaac Murphy, slaveborn Negro who won four American and three Kentucky Derbies; whip-snapping Snapper Garrison, whose habit of coming from behind to win made “Garrison finish” a U. S.

idiom; Lucien Lyne, Derby winner in 1902; and Johnny Bullman, winner in 1900-01. Lindheimer’s 4-mile race, to be known as the Marathon championship, will enjoy the dubious distinction of being America’s longest.

* Colonel Winn’s American Turf Association still owns Chicago’s Lincoln Fields, Kentucky’s Churchill Downs and Latonia race tracks.