At Aintree

Golden Miller, winner in 1934, fell at the first fence. His jockey remounted but the Miller refused at Valentine's Brook and was withdrawn. Avenger, overnight favorite because the track was soft, fell at the first jump the second time round, broke his neck, had to be shot. At odds of 100-to-1, Lord Mildmay's stallion Davy Jones took the lead from the start and held it the second time around, over Becher's Brook, around the Canal Turn and past Valentine's Brook. There were two jumps left before the finish.

Of the innumerable superstitions that surround the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree, England, one is that the same horse never wins two years in a row. Fortunately, the horses who run the race are unacquainted with the legends upon which their admirers base predictions of its outcome. Winner of the Grand National of 1935 was Major Noel Furlong's Irish gelding Reynoldstown, ridden by his son Frank, who was delighted because first prize ($32,000) enabled him to marry. Last week Frank Furlong, married to Pamela Kingsmill and fatter than a year ago, was too heavy to ride his father's horse but Reynoldstown was in the race again, patently unaware of the hazards that tradition placed against his winning. The first time round, his rider, Fulke Walwyn, lost his whip but Reynoldstown stayed with the leaders without urging. As Davy Jones took the third fence from the finish, Reynoldstown was a strong second, with the remaining ten horses in the field, including the U. S. entries, Pete Bostwick's Castle Irwell and John Hay Whitney's Double Crossed, strung out well behind.

The only sound tradition about the Grand National, 4 1/2 miles over the hardest course in the world, is that anything can happen. Just before Davy Jones took the second fence from the finish last week, one of his reins broke near the bit. The part of the crowd of 250,000 that was standing near the finish saw the Hon. Anthony Mildmay steer his father's horse desperately over the jump, but on the flat again Davy Jones veered sharply, ran off the course.

That left only one thing for Reynoldstown to do: gallop comfortably past the screaming grandstand, 12 lengths in front of Ego. He did so and became the first horse to win the Grand National at Aintree two years in a row since The Colonel in 1869 and 1870.

In addition to being the hardest steeplechase in the world, the Grand National is also occasion for one of the three great annual lotteries of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes Committee. Twelve million dollars' worth of tickets were sold on last week's race, $7,000,000 worth of prizes given away. Of the $7,000,000, U. S. ticket holders got almost $3,000,000. In the past most U. S. holders of winning tickets have turned out to be impoverished eccentrics whose extravagances made good newspaper reading. The list of last week's major winners suggested that sweepstakes are currently attracting a more substantial but less colorful clientele. Miss Martha Wellington, secretary to the advertising manager of The New Yorker, Mrs. Fannie Lebowitz of Albany, N. Y., a 71-year-old Salem, Mass, bachelor named Amos Strout, a firm of two Lynn, Mass, telephone operators, and a Hollywood billing clerk each won $150,000 with tickets on Reynoldstown. Mrs. Lebowitz said she planned to "make everybody happy." The rest said nothing and Secretary Wellington even ducked photographers.

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