Alias Aknahton

When a comparatively unknown horse wins a race at short odds, racing officials are likely to be curious. They were curious last September when a little-known horse named Shem won a race at Havre de Grace. Investigation showed that the horse was not Shem but a four-year-old named Aknahton, disguised with dye. Havre de Grace officials satisfied themselves that gamblers had arranged the dyeing, suspended nine of them, including notorious Nathan ("Nigger Nate") Raymond. They traced the career of Aknahton to a small town in Indiana, where he dropped out of sight.

Three weeks ago, in Miami, racing officials became suspicious again, this time because a little-known horse named Gailmont was 2-to-1 favorite in a race for three-year-olds. After being far ahead, Gailmont broke down, finished eleventh. Hialeah then discovered that, though Gailmont looked very much like a horse of that name and had raced successfully at Agua Caliente, he was not really Gailmont, but Aknahton again, in a new coat of paint. His owner, one Willis Kane, was nowhere to be found. Neither was one John P. Crawford, who bought the real Gailmont last December. Much puzzled by the metamorphic career of Aknahton, racing enthusiasts found out no more about him until last week when E. Phocion Howard, publisher of the lively racing weekly New York Press, printed an interview with one Paddy Barrie, whom he described as "an engaging little cuss." Paddy Barrie, an ex-jockey of Scotch extraction who professed to have ridden in two Grand Nationals and to have collaborated on newspaper articles with the late Author Edgar Wallace, told all about the dyeing of Aknahton, gave out valuable hints on "ringing'' in general: "It's the softest thing in the world to ring a horse, but it's a racket, like anything else. . . . You must know the markings of the horse so the 'ringer' can be made up accordingly. It costs about $100 to dye a horse. . . . Before you put the dye on it's necessary to sweat the horse and dry him out. . . . "When we rung Aknahton as Shem at Havre de Grace, I shipped the horse back to Jamaica, then sent him to Crown Point, Ind., where . . . the Pinkertons located him. . . . I gave a certain police official $500 . . . and they never saw him again until at Hialeah. . . . Well, the Pinks had a picture of me taken in England in 1917, when I was sentenced for three years for ringing a horse. I got trapped going to the garage to get my car. . . ." Far from discouraged by being trapped by "the Pinks," Paddy Barrie entrained for New York, only State in the U. S. with a law which makes dyeing racehorses a criminal offense. Unable to charge him with committing a crime, Florida officials planned to have Paddy Barrie deported because of his prison record in England.

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