(See front cover)
"Ride just as if you were out hunting the first time around. After that, and not before, you may begin to look about you and see what the others are doing."
This sage hint for the Grand National was given by an old trainer to Count Charles Kinsky, who won the race with his own mare, Zoedone, in 1883. Another scrap of the lore which has grown up since 1839 around the hardest steeplechase in the world—four and one-half miles over 30 jumps at Aintree, England—is not to ride a favorite. Most Grand National winners have been outsiders. At Aintree this week the favorites—Miss Dorothy Paget's Golden Miller and Mrs. M. A. Gemmell's Gregalach, the winner at 100-to-1 in 1929—had a better chance than usual. Last week the entries were cut down to 34, smallest field since 1926.
The smallness of the field emphasized the fact that the Grand National—partly because in the U. S. steeplechasing has lagged behind flat-racing—has become almost as much of an event for U. S. owners as it is for British. There were nine U. S.-owned horses in the list of final acceptances last week. One of them, Mrs. Thomas H. Somerville's Trouble Maker, had a chance to take from Rubio, the 1908 winner, the distinction of being the only U. S.-bred horse ever to win at Aintree. Only two U. S. owners—Stephen ("Laddie") Sanford in 1923 with Sergeant Murphy and A. Charles Schwartz in 1926 with Jack Homer—have won Grand Nationals. The owner who has tried hardest to equal their achievement has had the hardest luck. He is John Hay ("Jock") Whitney who has had entries in every Grand National since 1929. Last week he sold one of his candidates for this year's race—a jumper named Slater—to an Englishman. His remaining horse, Dusty Foot, who fell at the third fence last year when he was one of the favorites, may be the first U. S.-owned & ridden horse to win at Aintree. Dusty Foot's jockey this week was to be his owner's friend, George Herbert ("Pete") Bostwick, ablest gentleman rider in the U. S. Pete Bostwick went to England last autumn planning to ride one of his own steeplechasers in the Grand National, but his likeliest mount, Burglar, trained badly. Last week he accepted the Whitney horse.
Waiting for the parade to the post this week Jock Whitney will have good reason to have faith in Jockey Bostwick and Dusty Foot. They won one of the most significant tests for the Grand National, the Open Hunters' Steeplechase at Sandown, month ago. Last fortnight they finished second in the National Hunt Steeplechase at Cheltenham (TIME, March 20). But Jock Whitney's excitement as he watches the field, cluttered at the start, narrow off toward Melling Road, will be evidence also of his faith in something even less tangible than Dusty Foot's chances in this year's Grand National. The owner of favored Golden Miller is his cousin. Like her, he will be upholding the tradition of a family which, for three generations, has made its name almost constantly the most important one in U. S. racing; a family which, for half a century, has been at the forefront of the U. S. sporting aristocracy.