Sport: A Way with Horses

The race was just a lowbrow $5,500 "claimer," the last on a long day's card at California's Santa Anita Park. The stands were littered with tickets and tout sheets, and sullen losers were already fighting traffic on their way home. Aboard a lackluster hayburner named Strathnaver, Jockey Willie Shoemaker was having traffic troubles, too. Bottled up in the backstretch, he slipped his mount through a narrow gap on the rail, brandished his whip, and drove hard for the finish. Strathnaver collared the leaders in the last 70 yds., hung on wearily to win...

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