Nice Colt

One morning last week, before the dew was off the bluegrass at Kentucky's Keeneland track, a bay colt broke and ran. Stop watches ticked away. The naked eye could tell what the watches verified: that the bay colt was really covering ground. Coaltown worked five furlongs in the fastest training time--:58 2/5--ever run at Keeneland. Warren Wright's Calumet Farm, which seems to have a monopoly on racing's fastest horses (Armed, Bewitch, Citation, Fervent and Faultless), had developed another.

All that day in the barns, the stable hands talked. They agreed that Coaltown, a hot Kentucky Derby prospect, could "run like an "ape with a striped behind."* There was also talk about the strange noises Coaltown used to make, like a furnace roaring, when he breezed or galloped. Some said he was wind-broken. Actually, the weird, snoring noises were a hangover from a throat ailment that once caused him to keel over during a workout, and that kept him from racing as a two-year-old. Now, the noises were gone. Last winter at Hialeah Park, when he ran his first race, Coaltown won with ridiculous ease. Next time out, Coaltown equaled Hialeah Park's six-furlong track record with a breathtaking 1:09 3/5. The question was: could he go the grueling (1 1/4 mile) Derby distance?

Last week, a day after his remarkable workout, unbeaten Coaltown showed signs that he could. He charged from behind to win over a fine field in Keeneland's Phoenix Handicap.

Just how good is Coaltown? Bookmakers had already made him No. 2 in the Kentucky Derby winter book. Said Trainer Ben Jones, casually: "A nice colt, but he hasn't had the experience. Citation is the greatest horse in the country." No man to hedge his bets, Ben also trains Citation, the even-money favorite to win Kentucky's greatest horse race on May Day.

* Race-trackese for swift as the wind.

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