Lucky Misses

Like 250,000 other Venezuelans, Senorita Mercedes Urbina and her cousin, Sefiorita Elena Josefina Gonzalez Urbina, enjoy taking a modest flyer on the Five-and-Six, he country's fabulous Sunday horse-race lottery, based on a five-or six-horse combination. But since they are sheltered girls who find form charts hard to puzzle out they relied mainly on Mercedes' brother Nelson for expert handicapping in last week's races at Caracas' Hipodromo track. With proper humility they accepted his picks for the first four races; then girlish independence took over and they followed feminine intuition in picking the fifth and sixth.

Nelson, as it turned out, did very well; his winners got him $3,600 for a $3 ticket. But the girls' ticket, the day's only entry that listed all six winners correctly, paid off $300,000. Mercedes and Elena Josefina took the windfall calmly, perhaps because they could not understand just how much money $300,000 is. Mercedes is eight years old and is in the fifth grade; Elena Josefina is four, goes into kindergarten next year.

* At right, Handicapper Nelson.

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