WHEN INDIAN TRAILS THROUGH THE wilds of America were widened out into roads, then wagons were built and men began to drive as well as to ride their horses. Picture a stalwart pioneer setting off with his family in the go-to-meeting wagon. Driving proudly down the road he helped to build, he hears hoofbeats coming from behind. Instinctively he clucks to his horse, slaps the lines, and suddenly it’s a race! With wagons careening, dust billowing, children yelling, “Go it, Pa!” the two horses settle down to the business of matching speed for speed.
From these friendly brushes on the road America’s own sport of harness racing was born, and our forefathers created a breed expressly for it. Farmers in and about Orange County, New York, discovered that if they bred their mares to a stallion named Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, the foals were natural trotters instead of runners.
“See those opposite feet strike out together!” the farmers would exclaim. “It’s downright remarkable. Hambletonian has the blood of runners in him. Doesn’t he go back to the Darley Arabian?”
He did, indeed! Yet his colts and grandcolts showed speed at the trot instead of at the gallop. Today almost all trotters owe their action to Hambletonian’s blood. Each year The Hambletonian, a great race, is held in his honor. It is as well attended as the Kentucky Derby, and sometimes the purse is even larger.
Upon Hambletonian’s death trotting-horse admirers formed a club, and their rules were as American in spirit as the sport itself. Performance, not lineage, was the standard that counted. If a horse could trot the mile in two minutes and a half, or better, he could be registered. This new breed was named Standardbred because each horse had been bred to a standard of speed.
Since then harness-racing parks have sprung up in little and big cities alike. But the homespun country flavor is still there. Instead of flyweight jockeys the drivers are often white-haired substantial men who have bred and trained the horses they race. There is a saying that when breeder-trainer-driver is one man, watch out for a champion!
Such a one was Rosalind. And her famed handicap race brought out a great courage in the man, Ben White, and in the mare he trained. It is September 9, 1937. At the State Fair in Syracuse, New York, five horses are going to the post in the mile-and-a-half race, the All-American Trotting Handicap. One of the five is Rosalind. As she parades past the grandstand, men of the harness world are aware of her speed. Some watched her set a record in the Junior Kentucky Futurity. Some saw her win the Hambletonian as a three-year-old. Now they have all come to watch her race against the greatest handicap ever asked of a trotter. She must start 240 feet behind the wire, 60 feet behind the nearest horse.
In the faces of the crowd is a look of wondering. Men shake their heads. “It’ll take heart, and plenty of it,” they say, “to go the distance.”
Only one horse in all America would have been penalized more, and that was the mighty Greyhound. Colonel Baker, Greyhound’s owner, had refused to enter his horse in the race because he thought too much of the big gelding. “It’s an impossible handicap!” he had said. “A horse could spend his heart to win.”
Sitting quietly in the sulky, Ben White knows the danger, too. He loves Rosalind. Has he not raised her from a newborn, raised her and her sire and dam, too? But purposefully he drives her out on the track, for he has more at stake than the life of Rosalind. His son’s life, too, is at stake. She had been given as a tiny foal to the boy when he was lying ill and lonely in a sanatorium. Her racing pluck had once helped him get well. Maybe, now that he has been stricken a second time, her winning against great odds will help him win his battle, too. It is a chance the father must take.
The horses are heading for their stations: the two bay geldings, Friscomite and Fez, 120 feet behind the wire; Calumet Dilworthy and Lee Hanover, 180 feet. And still farther back—with the greatest penalty of all—Rosalind!
Her driver’s eyes are dark and troubled. He is unmindful of the crowded grandstand. He sees only a boy looking bravely out across the desert.
Now it is. Now, on this bright September day, at three o’clock in the afternoon. One o’clock mountain time. Rest time in hospitals. But one boy is not resting. He is holding the lines across the miles.
The father shakes the image from his head, thinking again of Rosalind, his mind on her mind, in her mind. He and she have been bred to a standard of speed. This is the time to show it.
Five horses get set on their marks—Rosalind poised for flight, trembling in her eagerness, straining toward the barrier. And now three barriers are sprung at the same instant, and as if some avalanche had let loose, the word “GO” roars from the stands.
Five horses are off! And right at the start Calumet Dilworthy and Lee Hanover move with a rush, passing Fez who breaks into a gallop and is pulled back by his driver, then passing Friscomite.
But Rosalind settles down to business, lengthens her stride. With a stroke of commanding power she reaches for Fez, inches up on him. She catches him and resolutely sweeps around him. Now she’s moving up on Friscomite, step by step, and before the first turn she’s passing him. And around the turn she matches stride with Calumet Dilworthy, goes eye to eye with him, then trots past him, too. At the quarter-mile pole only Lee Hanover is ahead, only Lee Hanover making it a race.
The father appears calm yet every nerve in his body is alive, every nerve traveling through the lines to Rosalind: “Now, girl, we’re about to take the lead. Now we’re going out in front.” Steadily she gains on Lee Hanover, then skims by him, her stroke fine and square.
She’s in the lead at the half-mile! Rosalind with the greatest handicap is on top! Ben White looks at his watch. One minute and ten seconds for the half-mile, with the handicap tucked in. She’s taking the track for her own, flying along as if all that anchors her to earth is the sulky and the man sitting quietly in it.
The father’s breath comes faster. The longest yards in any race are at the finish. He turns his head to see Lee Hanover coming out of nowhere, making a wild bid for the lead, coming up on Rosalind, gaining, gaining, now pressing her hard.
He reaches for his whip. He has to—a boy is waiting! He taps his beloved filly.
Rosalind feels the flick of the whip, feels the movement of the bit in her mouth. What’s wrong? She’s gone the mile, yet. . . . The whip? The bit? Hoof beats thundering hard by? Now she knows. It’s not over! Lee Hanover is on her, but she won’t be overtaken! From deep within comes one mite more of strength, and with a burst of speed she crosses the finish line, a nose in the lead.
Ben White clicks his stop watch. In three minutes, twelve and one-quarter seconds Rosalind has trotted the mile and a half, plus her handicap. She has set a new record for the distance; she has done the impossible.
Smiling, the father accepts the shining trophy, but his mind is busy elsewhere. He has a message to send. “Ten words will do it,” he thinks. “Ten flinty, big-going words, big as the mare’s twenty-foot stride.”
ROSALIND WINS HER HANDICAP RACE IN DRIVING FINISH. YOU, SON?
The boy won over his handicap, too. He did get well—a second time. And even his doctors agreed that, for him, horse medicine was the best kind of all.
