Beginner's Luck

In Goshen, N.Y. they still have horses & buggies that go like the devil. Last week 25,000 city slickers and country bumpkins gathered at Goshen's Good Time park to watch nine of the classiest three-year-olds in the U.S. trot it out for the Hambletonian, richest ($40,000) and most renowned of the 25,000 harness races still held throughout the U.S. every summer.

Trotting enthusiasts are not much on betting, but they know their bosses. Even knee-high railbirds knew last week that E. Roland Harriman's Florimel, winner of last year's Kentucky Futurity, was the fastest stepper in the bunch. She had stepped a mile in 2.03 1/2. But Florimel had shown a tendency to "break" (break her trotting gait) when she got nervous, and a Hambletonian winner must beat its rivals not once but twice.

Then there was Perpetual, owned and driven by foxy Doc Parshall, the Earl Sande of the sulky circuit. Perpetual, no great shakes as a two-year-old, had won three big stake races this summer (the Matron, the National and the Historic). But Doc's colt had recently come down with a fever, was seen stepping around the track wearing a jowl strap only an hour before the Big Race.

So the crowd put their dollars down on Bill Gallon, a brown colt owned by a comparative newcomer to harness racing, Cottonman R. Horace Johnston of Charlotte, N.C. Bill Gallon, named after one of Johnston's cronies, was purchased as a yearling for $1,800, was top money-winner ($14,000) among the two-year-olds last year. This summer, the Southern colt had failed to win a race on the Grand Circuit. Nevertheless, the wise men of Goshen, with no Racing Form to guide them, figured that Bill Gallon was the horse to beat.

After the first heat, they kicked themselves. With 20-odd Johnston kinfolk cheering from a front-row box, the Johnston colt got hopelessly out of step. Driver Lee Smith, an oldtimer on minor-league tracks but a newcomer to the Hambletonian, failed to get a good start, finished an embarrassing sixth.

The second heat was more comforting to the Gallon backers. Coming from behind like a fire horse, Johnston's colt nosed out His Excellency, pride of Brooklyn, in a photo finish. Sportswriter John Kieran said Bill Gallon had the longer nose. But Kieran must have been wrong. For in the third heat Bill Gallon breezed past his Yankee rivals, finished nearly three lengths in front of His Excellency, four ahead of Florimel.

Rallying around Bill Gallon's barn, the Johnston kinfolk celebrated with mint juleps, received from their host prints of the precious photo finish that had won the hallowed Hambletonian in Owner Johnston's first try.

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