Star over Da Quoin

Star over Du Quoin, III.

Outside, on the sun-soaked Du Quoin, Ill., State Fair grounds, hawkers hawked everything from fake jewelry to trusses and early American furniture. Girlie shows fringed the noisy midway. Prize hogs grunted, fat rabbits panted, chicken legs sputtered in deep fat. But most of the 37,718 fans jammed inside the gaily canopied grandstand and the adjacent bleachers had little use for such frippery. Their attention was focused on a burnished clay race track before them, where 15 sleek standardbreds were warming up for the start of trotting's annual classic--the $116,612 Hambletonian.

Wicked Position. Moved from its traditional Goshen, N.Y., setting six years ago, the Hambletonian* is still the most prestigious sulky race in the world. It is run in three one-mile heats (if three different trotters win the heats, the winner is decided in a runoff), and no betting is allowed. Even without betting, feeling runs high--and last week the 90DEG temperature, heavy humidity and the luck of the draw helped add to the tension as post time approached. The heavy favorite, Andrew C. Petersen's bay colt A.C.'s Viking, had drawn a wicked post position: No. 15, far from the rail in the second tier of horses.

Driver-Trainer Sanders Russell, 62, hobbled by a dislocated ankle, had to be helped from his crutches into the seat of his sulky.

But A.C.'s Viking, winner in ten of his eleven races this year, was unruffled.

"He's as unconcerned as an old plow horse," said his groom. "He's shy and aloof, and at times he can be a bit uppity, but he can afford to be, now that he is a star." He certainly got star treatment; so that he would not have to tread unfamiliar soil, his trainer imported a truckload of clay for his stall from Goshen, N.Y.

And the three-year-old lived up to his billing. In the first heat, Driver Russell saved ground along the rail, trailing the leaders until the top of the stretch. Then, said Russell, "a hole opened, and we went right through." Closing fast, A.C.'s Viking breezed home the winner by 1 3/4lengths.

Forgotten Ankle. An hour later, sponged down and rested, the horses were back on the track for the second heat.

A.C.'s Viking had earned the coveted No.1 slot, along the rail, and this time he needed every advantage he could get.

Shuffled back into the pack as a front-running filly grabbed the lead, Russell was forced to take A.C.'s Viking wide, still lagged in fourth place as the field pounded the last turn into the home stretch. For the first time since he has been driving A.C.'s Viking, Russell reluctantly went to his whip, and the tired horse responded instantly with a burst of speed that was just enough to carry him across the line a neck in front of a rank outsider named Isaac.

A stableboy rushed up with Russell's crutches, and bare-legged chorus girls swarmed around his sulky. "How's your ankle?" Illinois Governor Otto Kerner asked solicitously. Replied happy Hambletonian Winner Russell, contemplating his 10% cut of A.C.'s Viking's $62,854 purse: "I forgot I even had one."

* Named for Hambletonian X, the ancestor of almost every modern U.S. trotter and pacer. In 25 seasons, Hambletonian X got 1,331 foals, bringing nearly $200,000 in stud fees to his owner, a onetime farm hand named William Rysdyk, who bought him for $125. Hambleto-nian's own sire was Abdallah I, who wound up at 31 hitched to a fish peddler's wagon. After kicking the wagon to pieces, Abdallah ran off, roamed wild on a Brooklyn beach and finally died, standing up, of starvation.

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