Texas Filly

Last week in the picture-postcard setting that makes California's Santa Anita Park the most beautiful race track in the U. S., 50,000 turf addicts gathered for the rich Santa Anita Derby, first of this year's three $50,000 races for three-year-olds.* With the exception of William Ziegler's elegant El Chico, No. 1 Glamor Horse of last year's juveniles, who was not permitted to make a public appearance so early in the season, practically all the top-crust three-year-olds were in the parade to the post. Favorite was Airman William Boeing's Porter's Mite, the handsome bay colt who outshone all his contemporaries in the classic Belmont Futurity last autumn. Almost as popular was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt's Impound, son of famed Sun Beau, who beat Porter's Mite in a short handicap race at Santa Anita two weeks before. The twelve others, proudly prancing to the starting line, were expected to fight it out for third place.

But railbirds had underestimated a plain brown filly, Congressman Richard Kleberg's Ciencia (Spanish for Science, her dam's name), who was bred on the vast open spaces of his family's famed King Ranch,** Coming into the stretch, Ciencia, who had been trailing like a dogie up to the half-mile pole, suddenly rushed up,*** swept past the leaders, Porter's Mite and Bessie Franzheim's Xalapa Clown. When the dust had settled, 50,000 gasping spectators realized that a filly had won the Santa Anita Derby for the first time and had won it by the largest margin ever--five lengths. Co-favorites Porter's Mite and Impound had fought it out indeed, but for third place, one length behind Xalapa Clown.

-Others: Kentucky Derby, Preakness.

Largest in the U. S., it covers 1,250,000 Texas acres (almost twice as large as Rhode Island), is valued conservatively at $20,000,000.

Because of her sex, she had a five-pound weight advantage over the colts and geldings.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.