Old Enough to Win

Even as a boy in Nebraska, Bion ("Bi") Shively was crazy over horses. By the time he was twelve, he was a full-fledged jockey, booting them home at the county fairs. At 17, Bi quit jockeying and transferred his affections to harness racing, a sport in which oldsters have long excelled. But a kid rider's hell-for-leather zest could not make do for the good, grey experience required to steer a careering sulky behind a winning trotter or pacer. Bi was still learning the rudiments of the harness sport in 1898 when he was called to the Spanish-American War.

Now a slightly bent man with wispy white hair and Santa Claus eyes, Bi Shively has won "scores" of trots and paces. But he had never managed to win the richest harness race of all--the Hambletonian classic, which determines the top three-year-old U.S. trotter. In 1947 he copped the Hambletonian's first heat, but he failed to repeat and take the cup.*

One day last week at the kite-shaped Good Time track in Goshen, N.Y., Bi donned his maroon-and-gold driver's colors. At 74, he reckoned he was now old enough to win the big one. He also figured that his trotter, Sharp Note, a bay colt bought as a yearling for $1,000 by Dearborn Manufacturer Clyde W. Clark, was good enough. At Santa Anita this spring, Sharp Note won two starts, and set a track record for three-year-old trotters--a 2 min. 2 4/5 sec. mile--the fastest race time posted this year by any of the Hambletonian's 14 starters.

But some 15,000 fans who turned out for the $87,637 Hambletonian did not agree with Bi Shively's figuring. They made Sharp Note their third choice, bet heaviest on Coca-Cola Heir Walter T. Candler's three-year-old Duke of Lullwater, and on Hit Song, owned by the Arden Homestead Stable and Lawrence B. Sheppard.

At the start of the first heat, Sharp Note "broke" (i.e., went into a gallop, had to be reined back, lost time until he resumed trotting), but he regained enough ground to finish tenth behind winning Hit Song. Facing perhaps his last chance ever to win the Hambletonian, old Bi gently explained the situation to young Sharp Note.

In the next heat, the trotter came into the final turn with the pack, was swung wide by Shively, took a clear lead, pounded home in front of the Duke in his best race time ever, 1/5 sec. better than his Santa Anita mark. A 19-to-20 odds-on favorite in the third heat, Sharp Note finally brought the crowd around to Bi's original conclusion. Lagging back in the field until the last turn, he again showed his wallop in the homestretch, beat Hit Song by two lengths, going away. Sharp Note's purse: $47,236.64.

Later, after getting a crushing buss from Owner Clark's wife, the Hambletonian's oldest winning driver headed for the stables. There, winking as he munched an ice-cream bar, old Bi said: "I'm going out all night tonight."

* The Hambletonian trophy goes to the horse that wins two out of three one-mile heats; if three heats produce three different winners, there is a fourth and final runoff heat for those three only.

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