Sport: Greek Gold

Swarthy William George Helis, who since 1943 has spent more than anyone else on horses, watched some of the money come back last week. From the stands at Belmont Park, he could not spot his pale blue & white colors across the infield, but he would have no truck with field glasses; as usual, he relied on the announcer. After the announcer spotted Helis’ Greek Warrior in front, down the stretch, across the line to win the Legion Handicap and $6,050, Helis muttered: “That guy’s a good announcer.”

Willie Helis (rhymes with trellis) also had winners in this year’s Travers Stakes, Dixie and Saratoga Handicaps. With about a quarter million dollars in prize money, he is well on the way to being the top 1945 money-maker among horse owners.

Three-Year Splurge. Greek-born Willie Helis, now 58, arrived in the U.S. 41 years ago with $22 in his jeans. He learned to sleep with a diamond-tipped oil drill locked around his neck, and eventually hit the jackpot. He now owns more oil wells than he has time to count, has spent up to $3,800 on a single evening’s fling, smokes two dozen $1.50 cigars daily.

Knee-deep in Louisiana oil and politics, he and Huey Long used to get together for talkfests that often lasted until 4 a.m. Then Helis got interested in racing. He laid $525,000 on the line to save New Orleans’ Fair Grounds track from being auctioned. Because fashionable stables bypassed the Fair Grounds for the Florida and California tracks, he decided to stock the Fair Grounds with fast horses.

In three years, he splurged $360,000 for yearlings, spent a lot more on such older nags as Valdina Orphan ($100,000), Attention ($55,000) and Rounders ($50,000). His prize bust was the $66,000 spent for Pericles as a yearling in 1943. Pericles’ hooves proved too brittle to carry his outsized weight well; he has never run a race.

Full-Time Job. Racing men tried to talk free-spending Willie Helis into buying a breeding farm in Kentucky or Virginia. Instead, he bought New Jersey’s long-idle, 1,200-acre Rancocas Farm. Helis’ present ambition: 15 stallions and 250 brood mares, 225 new foals at Rancocas each spring.

When his business manager told him that racing cost him $450,000 to operate last year, Willie could afford to ask, and did: “So what?” Yet he never bets more than a piddling amount on a race. Not that he isn’t a gambler. When he bought $125,000 worth of horses from General Motorsman Henry Knight this year, he offered to flip a coin, double or nothing. Knight hesitated for a moment, then settled for a straight sale.

Helis has delegated to younger men the management of his tugboat fleet, distillery, oil wells and mines. Racing (and winning) keeps him so busy that he has even had to put off an urgent stomach operation.