Sport: Fool’s Game

John Barton Townley, 34, is a rich Englishman with a Falstaffian laugh and a weak heart. Because of the heart, his doctor advised him to give up golf and rugger. So Townley, having studied the racing sheets as well as law at Cambridge, bought some race horses. Last week, at Newmarket, his weak heart thumped and bumped under a strain that might have told on stronger men.

His horse Sterope had just won the Cambridgeshire Stakes. The purse was a mere $12,273, but Townley stood to win a staggering $600,000 in bets. And the jockey on Royal Tara, which finished second, had claimed a foul against his horse. What if Townley’s horse had won only to be disqualified?

He had planned the coup carefully. First, the horse was bought last July for about £4,000 with only the Cambridgeshire in mind. The tough, hilly Newmarket course was studied foot by foot so that the jockey could be told “where to do what” far in advance. Townley bet his money strategically, in driblets spread among more than 80 bookmakers. He got some money on at 50 to 1, some more al 40. Then the price eased off to 33. Sterope went to the post at 25 to 1. Altogether Townley bet about $16,000 on him to win —and Sterope won by a slim half-length While Townley waited, the stewards reviewed the claim of foul. They not only disallowed it, but fined Jockey Charlie Smirke $100 for making a “frivolous objection.” After collecting his $600,000 Plunger Townley said with the air of man who means it: “Betting is a fool’s game. I think I’ll go in for breeding now.’