Pink-Nosed Bay

Fred W. ("Lucky") Hooper watched' quietly as a high-heeled man from Texas paced the paddock at Florida's Tropical Park one day last winter. "I'll bet twenty-five on the quarter-horse," barked the Texan. A passerby peeled two tens and a five from his roll and offered to take the bet. "Put that chicken feed back in your pocket," roared the Texan. "I mean twenty-five thousand."

Texans are that way about quarter-horses, a cow-pony type bred for a short, dizzy burst of speed. Still, Fred Hooper figured that his thoroughbred, Olympia, could run a faster short burst than any horse he had ever seen. No one knows exactly how much money changed hands that day on the quarter-mile match race between Stella Moore, the quarter-horse from Texas, and Olympia, the finely tempered thoroughbred. The race-track experts themselves leaned toward the quarter-horse. But tall (6 ft. 2 1/2 in.) Fred Hooper quietly covered all bets--and saw his thoroughbred win by a neck.

Beginner's Plum. Georgia-born Fred Hooper has been doing all right since 1923, the year he cleared a 15-mile stretch of land on contract for the Florida East Coast Railroad. Out of that shoestring venture grew a flourishing construction business. Hooper later bought a 5,038-acre farm in Alabama's "black belt" country and a long-legged quarter-horse named Royal Prince, that was unbeautiful but fast. Winning match races with this "moneymaking horse," he dented so many rich Georgia and Florida farmers that people stopped betting against him.

On a visit to Lexington, Ky., Hooper met ex-Jockey Ivan Parke (the nation's leading rider in 1923-24) and decided to buy some thoroughbreds for Parke to train. The first one he bought, a $10,200 yearling which he named Hoop Jr., won the Kentucky Derby in 1945. It was a plum that many a sportsman had spent years and millions of dollars trying to pluck. Now Lucky Hooper's Olympia, a chunky bay three-year-old with a white face and a pink nose, is the red-hot favorite for the 75th running of the Derby, the most glamourous of U.S. horse races.

Shortly after his victory over the quarter-horse in Florida, Olympia was loaded onto an airplane for California. Flashing to the front in Santa Anita's $50,000 San Felipe Stakes, Olympia was still there at the end of the seven-furlong race. But in the $100,000 Santa Anita Derby, at a mile and an eighth, he weakened in the stretch and finished second to Old Rockport, an unsung outsider. Flown back to Florida, Olympia won the $50,000 Flamingo Stakes (at a mile and an eighth), then headed for New York. A rugged, unemotional colt, Olympia seemed to thrive on traveling.

On to Louisville. Last week at Jamaica the track was sloppy for the $40,000 Wood Memorial, the race that had been a Derby stepping stone for such great horses as Twenty Grand, Gallant Fox, Count Fleet and Assault. The odds on Olympia were a prohibitive 1 to 3. He shot into the lead at the start, in a driving rainstorm, and stayed in front by a length or two to the homestretch. There, mud-loving Palestinian caught him and forged slightly ahead. Jockey Eddie Arcaro stung Olympia once with the whip, then gave the form players a chill by hand-riding the horse through the last sixteenth.

Olympia responded by catching Palestinian in the last few jumps, and won by a short neck. Said Hedley Woodhouse, Palestinian's jockey: "I should have won it, but my horse slipped about five strides from the finish." Motion pictures of the race indicated that Palestinian had tried to jump a puddle. Capot, the second choice (at 5 to 1) for the Derby and apparently no mudder, was six lengths back in third place.

Two days later, Olympia was loaded onto a plane at La Guardia Airport and flown to Louisville. With the big race only twelve days away, Kentuckians were still waiting to be shown that Olympia could carry his dizzy speed over the mile and a quarter Derby route. He also had to prove that he was a better horse than Old Rock-port--and a couple of Kentucky sleepers, Johns Joy and Ky. Colonel.

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