Mr. Big

Among railbirds, the favorite for the Kentucky Derby is always called the Big Horse--Mr. Big or Miss Big, as the case may be. Last week Colonel Edward Riley Bradley's Bimelech was tagged Mr. Big and loomed so large that he made Shetlands of a dozen other three-year-olds who will go to the post for the 66th running of the $75,000 Derby at Churchill Downs this week.

All winter, racing fans have been buzzing about Bimelech. Those who saw him race last year could not forget the effortless ease with which he floated in front of his contemporaries, winning all six of his starts--including all three two-year-old classics, Hopeful Stakes, Belmont Futurity and Pimlico Futurity. In the Kentucky Derby future books, more than 50% of the money wagered went on Bimelech's nose.

Last week, 13,000 racing fans turned out at Kentucky's Keeneland Park to watch Big Bim run in the Blue Grass Stakes, his first appearance as a three-year-old. With ailing, 80-year-old Colonel Bradley watching from his car near the clubhouse, Bimmy, floating along with his tongue stuck out and his eyes half-closed, proved that he is just as good at three as he was at two. On a slow track, without any urging, he ran the 1 1/8 miles in 1:51 flat, beating Joseph Widener's Roman by two lengths and his own stablemate, Bashful Duck, by five.

To Octogenarian Bradley it was an elixir. Winner of four Kentucky Derbies, he has been living for the day when his green & white silks will again "get there the quickest," and thereby establish a record not likely to be broken. In Bimelech, whom he named after the Biblical warrior, Abimelech (dropping the A because it is an old Bradley custom to B-name all horses), Colonel Bradley has great faith.

No sooner had the results of the Blue Grass Stakes been flashed across the U. S. than odds against Big Bim dropped from 2-to-1 to 4-to-5 in the future books--first time in Derby history that a horse was quoted an odds-on favorite before the day of the race. While bookmakers stopped taking bets on Big Bim, horse players turned their attention to his dwarfed rivals: Arnold Hanger's Dit (winner of last week's Wood Memorial), William L. Brann's Pictor (who romped off with the Chesapeake Stakes fortnight ago), Charles S. Howard's Mioland (pride of the West Coast), Tony Pelleteri's Andy K. (Mr. Big's chief rival last year). They kept their fingers crossed, remembering well that Colonel Bradley's last winter-book favorite (Blue Larkspur in 1929) came in fourth.

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