Winning Weights

Racing's most stirring sight is a full field of fleet-footed thoroughbreds, hooves flying and necks stretched, battling evenly to the wire. But the sight is usually just a fantasy: horses often prefer simply to chase each other's tails. To make the race a better contest is the job of the track handicapper, who assigns weights--including saddle, jockey and lead slugs slipped into the saddlebags--to slow down the fast runner, give the other horses a chance to compete. At the nation's top race tracks--New York State's Belmont, Saratoga and Aqueduct --the man who decides how heavy a load the horses will carry is a tall, freckled handicapper with the eminently horsey name of Tommy Trotter.

Last week Handicapper Trotter, 34, closeted himself in his concrete-walled office for 60 hours in all, handicapping such horses as Bolinas Boy, Chief of Chiefs and Wolfram. Pursuing an elusive goal--"I'm always satisfied with a photo finish" --he follows a general rule of thumb: three lbs. of weight equals one length in a mile race. From his performance charts (meticulously maintained by a trained, fulltime staff of nine), his own turf experience (he began working at tracks when he was 19) and reliable paddock chatter, Trotter gets the information he needs to assign weights: the ability of the horse to carry weight, the quality of its stable, the canniness of its trainer, the track's condition.

Trotter imposes weights for about 45 stakes races and 50 overnight handicaps each season, gets $25,000 a year for his labors--but does not bet any of it on the horses. Though he has never realized the handicapper's ideal of a multi-horse dead heat, he has had some satisfying moments. His best: for last year's Citation Handicap at Chicago's Washington Park, he assigned 121 lbs. to On-and-On, 114 to Little Tytus and Better Bee, 110 to Top Charger. Then he watched them fight to a photo finish, with only a neck separating the four.

Handicapping is no job for a sensitive man. Owners complain bitterly about "unfair" weights, but Trotter shrugs off such criticism with the impassivity of a baseball umpire. Fortnight ago, when he assigned 136 lbs.--heaviest handicap of his career--to the speedy, four-year-old gelding, Kelso, in the $112,800 Brooklyn Handicap, Trotter said calmly: "I expect complaints." None came--although Kelso had to spurt from behind to eke out a narrow, 1 1/4-length victory. "He's one of the great ones," said Handicapper Trotter after the race. "No question about it." Then Trotter added: "Of course, if I have to weight him again, he'll have to pick up a few more pounds."

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