Victory in Harness

One of the true ancients of U.S. sport had his greatest day of championship last week. White-topped Ben White, 70 years old and driver-trainer of harness horses since Grover Cleveland's second administration, won the World Series of harness racing: the $40,000 Hambletonian Stake for three-year-old trotters.

For Mr. Ben, whose name is a romantic byword wherever sulkymen gather, it was no comeback. This year's Hambletonian was the fourth he had won since the classic got under way in 1926 (no other driver has won more than twice) when Mr. Ben was a stripling of 53. It was the second Hambletonian he had snatched with his gnarled, gentle hands in two years of racing. For age and longtime performance, U.S. sport had never seen his equal.

Mr. Ben's horse this time was a solid, sound bay colt named Volo Song. With a good record and the best handler in the game, he was the betters' favorite in the first Hambletonian raced at Yonkers' Empire City oval.

Volo Song and Mr. Ben raced a losing first heat that turned the classic into a three-heat thriller. Volo Song broke off-stride at the start, did not strike his gait until he was an impossible 20 lengths back.

Then he trotted a sizzling mile to pull up from last (eleventh) to third. Clock watchers figured he had actually trotted a two-minute mile against Worthy Boy's winning 2:02 1/2. Volo Song took the remaining two heats and the Hambletonian for Owner Bill Strang of Brooklyn without much trouble.

To Yonkers for the big race went a surprising number of horsemen, breeders, farmers, from all over the nation. They took a homey atmosphere to slick Empire.

A stone's throw from the bandbox grandstand, fires burned and horses were shod in emergency blacksmith shops (it takes from two to three hours to shoe a harness horse: each shoe is put on at a different angle). Harness makers, like ambulant country storekeepers, set up business outside their trailers. Bearded drivers displaced Empire's familiar, flashy midget jockeys in white duck.

Over them all hovered the spirit of Hambletonian, progenitor of champions. Never a flashy winner, Hambletonian (1849-76) broke no records. But his blazing spirit and his success as a sire made him a harness immortal. Ninety-five per cent of top trotters today trace their blood to him through at least one line. Standard breds, from Hambletonian down, are still the only purely U.S. contribution to the sporting horse, and to a sport where age as well as youth is served.

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