Scions of Hambletonian 10

Stifled by flat racing until 1926 was its country cousin, harness racing. Then William Neal Reynolds, 70, board chairman of Reynolds Tobacco Co., Manhattan Socialite E. Roland Harriman, Track Owner William Henry Cane of Goshen. N.Y. and John L. Dodge organized the Trotting Horse Club to revive a country gentleman's sport they feared was dying. For 53 summers the trotting descendants of the great U.S. trotter Hambletonian 10, sire of the 1850's, had pounded around the dirt tracks of the Grand Circuit: now bounded by Cleveland, Toledo, Salem, N.H., Goshen, N.Y., Springfield, Ill., Syracuse, N.Y., Indianapolis, and Lexington, Ky. The Trotting Horse Club members established as climax to the season the $50,000 Hambletonian Stake, run in mid-August at Goshen. In 1930, 7,000 trotting men and bumpkins saw a descendant of Hambletonian 10 win. This year, while William Reynolds' bay filly Mary Reynolds was winning several preliminary races on the Grand Circuit, a publicity agent was high-pressuring newspaper interest in trotting racing. Last week 30,000 trotting fans crowded Goshen's green valley, its dusty Main Street. Eastern newspapers sent their crack sports writers to cover it. A trotting horse is trained not to break into a gallop. Pulling the little low-hung sulky with the driver perched nearly under his tail, he must not stretch out to pull himself along, must drive his legs rhythmically down and back. He is rarely above or below form, cannot win on pure gameness. If he is fastest by the clock he usually wins. Hence last week the experts figured the favorite Mary Reynolds to win although she had recently been beaten twice. The Grand Circuit's traveling bookmakers openly wrote her odds at 5 to 2, figured her runner-up would be a New Jersey colt named Brown Berry, driven by a 50-year-old Kentuckian named Fred Egan. In the draw for positions, important in trotting, Mary Reynolds got third place from the rail in the front row of seven sulkies. On the outside of the second row of five was Brown Berry. Twelve sulkies pulled by seven colts, two geldings and three fillies circled on Goshen's drying track in systematic confusion for the start of the first heat. Since a trotter must have a trotting start, the starter's problem is to get all the horses to cross the starting line in two more or less regular rows. Starter Steve Phillips could not see from his low starting stand that one of the horses had broken into a gallop when he sent last week's twelve away on the first score. Going to the first turn of the triangular track, Fred Egan edged Brown Berry out of the ruck. He watched Mary Reynolds slip into the lead, watched horse after horse try to catch her, break irritably into a gallop and be taken to the outside to calm down. Last to try it was tough little Brown Berry. Mary Reynolds watched him come, and slacken. Then she pulled her sulky wheels in front of his nose, slammed home in 2:03 3/4, three lengths ahead of Brown Berry.

On the second heat Mary Reynolds confidently got away in the lead. At the first turn, trotting in the clear by a length, she suddenly saw the shadow of the rail across the inside of the track. When she broke nervously into a gallop and was taken to the outside, the leaders rushed past her. Driver Ben White got her back into stride, then set out after the, field, caught it on the second stretch. Tired by a blistering quarter-mile after her break, Mary Reynolds led Brown Berry to the last turn, when a third horse, Hollyrood Portia, left the ruck and set out after her. As Mary spun around the turn, Driver Egan desperately cut Brown Berry inside her. At the same time Hollyrood Portia swung wide outside her. Three abreast, they drove down the stretch like a cinema chariot race. While the crowd roared at the season's greatest finish, Brown Berry found a little extra in his tough hind legs, won by a hand. Mary Reynolds had enough left to beat Hollyrood Portia by the same margin.

The crowd did not know what to expect in the third heat, with both Mary and Brown Berry still quivering from the terrific second. All eleven horses (one had been withdrawn) were subdued, got away evenly at the first score. For a half-mile they ran in the order they had finished in the second. Then Mary fell back to third where she stayed until the last turn.

The crowd gasped at how much Mary had left as she hammered down the stretch two lengths behind Brown Berry. Ben White pulled her wide and she whaled away down the outside, closing like doom on Brown Berry. Fred Egan slapped the reins and Brown Berry began setting his hooves down faster. Running along the rail 50 yards from the finish, Brown Berry set one down on a stone no bigger than a marble. Brown Berry plunged to the ground, his muzzle sliding through the dirt, catapulting Egan against his crupper and down between the shafts. Clinging desperately to the reins, Egan, as game as his horse, somehow hitched himself back on the seat but ten sulkies had swept by and Brown Berry finished eleventh. Mary Reynolds, with her two out of three heats, won $28,300 in prize money for Owner Reynolds. Though the crowd felt that Brown Berry had lost by a fluke, experts agreed that Mary Reynolds would have caught him, stumble or no.

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