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This Memorial Day weekend, two days of racing will give some 400,000 customers a chance to bet as much as $21 million on the horses and hunches they like.
At Garden State Park, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia,' Palestinian and Olympia are expected to head the field of three-year-olds in the $50,000-added-Jersey Stakes. For Californians, Hollywood Park will feature the $25,000-added Will Rogers Handicap, in which Star Fiddle and Pedigree are entered. Boston, Wilmington, Detroit, Chicago, and scores of lesser U.S. tracks will also put their best equine feet forward this weekend—as will Toronto's Woodbine Park, where the best of the Canadian racing crop will run for the Sg-year-old, $10,000-and-50-guineas King's Plate (probable favorite: Epic).
The pick of the ponies—and the crowd of crowds—will be at New York's Belmont Park. There some 75,000 racing fans will bet some $5,000,000 and see renewals of two choice stakes: the Coaching Club American Oaks for three-year-old fillies and the Suburban Handicap for older horses, both $50,000-added attractions. Topping the Oaks field is Calumet Farm's Wistful. Topping the Suburban entries—by such a wide margin that he was all but "weighted out of the race" this week—was Calumet's great Coaltown, co-holder of two world's records.
Barn 41, Belmont. Since 1940, Calumet Farm has been a front runner in the U.S. racing stakes. Whirlaway, Pensive, Twilight Tear and Armed were the horses that first carried Calumet's devil red and blue to fame & fortune. In the past three years, Calumet's Citation and Coaltown, Fervent and Faultless, Pot o' Luck, Ponder, Bewitch and Wistful have run away from all competition. Other horsemen may not be happy about it, but the public is. Fans know that Calumet is not a betting stable, and that its horses are always sharp when they go to the post for a big race.
This week, Calumet's racing headquarters was Barn 41, at Belmont Park, once base of operations for Oilman Harry F. Sinclair's all-conquering Rancocas Stable. Despite the barnyard-like peace that always hangs over the stable area at dawn, there was an undertone of excitement around Barn 41. Boys from other stables, trudging past on their way to a cup of coffee, eyed it as a country boy would the big house on the hill.
At 6 a.m., the first set of nine horses headed for the track. During the next five hours, 28 Calumet horses kept moving under the watchful eye of Trainer H. A. ("Jimmy") Jones. But the one man most responsible for the stable's extraordinary success, recognized by his fellow horsemen as the best in the business with something to spare, wasn't even there. Calumet's famed Benjamin A. (for Allyn) Jones, trainer of five Kentucky Derby winners and leading money-winning trainer last year, was in Kentucky handling another string of Calumet horses.
Barn 15, Churchill Downs. Ben wasn't worrying about what was going on in New York. He had taught his son Jimmy all the tricks he knew. "I can train three horses better than Jimmy," he says, "but Jimmy can train 50 better'n me."