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At 66, bulldog-jawed, 5 ft. 10½ in. Ben Jones walks with short, mincing steps and a hint of a limp (from a football injury). But he sits a horse straighter than most men half his age. Outside Barn 15 at Churchill Downs last week, atop his stable pony, Ben hardly looked like the boss of the most efficiently run stable in U.S. racing history. There are no fancy airs about Ben Jones, from Parnell, Mo.
Around Plain, Ben's pony, munching grass, was a set of Calumet horses with the exercise boys still in the saddles. It is one of Ben's tricks to let his horses settle down and get a bellyful of grass as soon as they come back from a morning's gallop. He feels that it helps horses get the idea that work and play are practically the same thing. Such basic ideas, plus patience and instinctive horse sense, have made him famous wherever horses are raced.
Men from Missouri. Ben Jones is not the first famous horse trainer from Missouri. In the '20s a close-mouthed man from Independence, superstitious Sam Hildreth, worked wonders with Sinclair's Rancocas horses.
Jones makes a habit of sending fat horses to the post. So did Hildreth; old-timers still remember that his Zev was "fat as a pig" the day he won the 1923 Kentucky Derby. Hildreth's superstitious aversion to cameras and black cats is something that Jones has no time for, but he shares his predecessor's ability to glance at a horse and tell how it feels. On the way to the track for a morning workout, he frequently flabbergasts an exercise boy, as Hildreth used to, by saying "Take that filly back to the barn."
The secret of keeping horses high in flesh, Missouri-style, is so fundamental that many horsemen pay little heed to it. The secret: hay. When the feed man delivers a bale that doesn't strike Ben's fancy, back it goes. "I can smell hay, or feel it in the dark, and tell whether horses will like it," he says.
Rival from Brooklyn. Even Trainer Jones performs no feeding or training miracles with second-rate horses. Quick to spot the no-goods, he loses no time unloading them. His pet phrase: "Trade'm away for a dog and then shoot the dog."
Those he keeps are more than likely to go places, thanks to the fact that Ben Jones is a first-class manager as well as a smart conditioner of horses. Plenty of other stables have good stock, conditioned to a fine edge, but never make money because the trainers run their animals in competition that is over their heads.
The only trainer today who even challenges Ben Jones is redheaded, Brooklyn-bred Hirsch Jacobs, 45, who has a talent for placing horses properly, i.e., in races they figure to win. Like Jones, Jacobs is an unusually keen observer, and he has a phenomenal memory, especially for the ailments of other men's horses. But for sheer training-horsemanship, wily Ben Jones (in partnership with able son Jimmy) has no real rival. He has come a long way from Parnell (pop. 490), with more than a few detours.
Right Down Main Street. The folks around Parnell remember young Ben as a rough one. Quick as a cat and strong.as a bull, he could lick any young buck in the county, and frequently did, and he would bet on anything.