Dancer's Choice

HORSE RACING

"Picking a good horse," insists Stanley Dancer, 40, "is like picking a good girl friend. You look for soundness of legs and stance, broad chest and rear end, good shoulders and ears." Chacun a son gout, but as long as he sticks to picking horses Dancer (not to be confused with such animal namesakes as

Native Dancer and Dancer's Image) is welcome to his choice. As the most successful trainer and driver in U.S. harness racing, he has won $1,000,000 or more in purses during each of the past four seasons, and in the process produced a steady succession of champions: Su Mac Lad was 1962's Horse of the Year; Cardigan Bay, the wealthiest harness horse ever ($980,000 since 1959); Noble Victory, the two-year-old champion of 1965 and winner of 37 out of 54 races.

Dancer's choicest champ is Nevele Pride, a three-year-old trotter* who is hooked on hot dogs, beer and cigarettes (he does not smoke them; he eats them). Despite those hang-ups, Dancer calls him "the best trotter I've ever driven." Last week at Long Island's Roosevelt Raceway, Dancer drove Nevele Pride to his 30th and richest victory in 33 starts in the $166,746 Dexter Cup.

The youngest of three racing brothers (a fourth drives a bus), Dancer spotted Nevele Pride as a yearling on a Pennsylvania farm in 1966 and purchased the colt for $20,000. Last year the trotter won a record $222,923 and turned in the fastest mile clocking (1 min. 58 2/5 sec.) ever achieved by a juvenile. Dancer is carefully pointing toward the Hambletonian, the U.S.'s most prestigious trotting race, on Aug. 25; hence he has raced the horse only lightly. Even at that, the colt won all four of his starts and $106,886--$83,373 at Roosevelt last week.

In the Dexter Cup, Nevele Pride had to overcome a bad post position--No. 7 in the field of eleven--that forced Dancer to "take the overland route" and drive three-wide for the first half of the mile race. Though Dancer eased him up at the end, Nevele Pride won in a waltz. His victory margin was four lengths, and his time--2 min. 22/5 sec. --clipped a full second off the old stakes record. "Before he is through," predicts Driver Dancer, "this horse could rewrite the record book." The erasers are already busy.

*A "trotter" strides diagonally, pairing his right foreleg and left rear leg, then his left fore and right rear; a "pacer" strides in parallel fashion, both right legs followed by both left.

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