In Louisville

"All right . . . keep that line and walk up. . . . Bring up that 12 horse. . . . Back, four. . . . Step back, I tell you. . . . All right, Jimmy, bring him up. . . . The Salmon horse . . . Eddy, get that 12 horse by the bridle and pull him up. . . .All right, hold it . . . hold it ... spread out there. . . ."

The head starter at Churchill Down was talking to a glistening, shifting wall of thoroughbreds, which nudged and minced and hesitated at one end of a green lane of Kentucky turf under a gold-and-blue sky. With one word more he would send them away, down the green lane, around a white-fenced circle for a mile and a quarter. The 75,000 turbulent shadows packed along the stretch would roar for two minutes, and one more Kentucky Derby would be over. Two minutes and a few seconds -- two minutes for which the jockeys had trained for months, for which the owners had planned for years, for which the horses had been groomed all their lives.

Gesticulating horsemen in the lobby of the Sellbach Hotel in Louisville had excitedly repeated the name of Bubbling Over for weeks, telling how this chestnut son of North Star III had smashed every fractional record up to a mile and an eighth when he won the Blue Grass stakes at Lexington by eight lengths. Eight lengths! That was the way Man-o'-War used to run.

E. R. Bradley of Kentucky had entered both Bagenbaggage and Bubbling Over and was telling his friends that they would place first and second, as his entries Behave Yourself and Black Servant did in 1921.

New Yorkers smiled indulgently at this declaration; they knew they had a horse worth a dozen Bubbling Overs; a horse that won the Hopeful and the Futurity last year; a small-hooved, huge-thewed bay colt by Sun Briar out of Cleopatra, who arrived in Louisville in a private car padded with silver canvas. They mentioned the morning that this horse had taken his first workout in the chill dews of seven o'clock-- a morning when the trainer had stood at the rail, frantically signaling Watson the exercise boy, to slow down, while the split-second gentry compared watches, believing that they must have made some mistake in timing this incredible horse. It was W. R. Coe's Pompey, as sure a winner as a sporting man could ask.

The Owners. While the jockeys, obedient to the voice that barked at them from the starter's platform, worked into line at the head of the stretch, their sleeves flashing, their caps bobbing, ten millionaires watched their maneuvers with an intimate and peculiar interest. They were the owners-- all rich then, but nine of them due to be poorer in a few minutes. There were W. R. Coe, Standard oil mines; Colonel Bradley, who once owned the Del Prado hotel in Chicago and whose racing stable, the Idle Hour Farm, has derived many benefits from a clothing store he formerly conducted on Madison Street, near Clark; J. E. Griffith, owner of Canter and of some profitable phosphate beds; W. J. Salmon, shrewd Manhattan real estate operator; William Ziegler Jr., baking powder magnate; Mrs. Margaret Emerson Baker, owner of Rockman, (bromo seltzer) ; I. B. Humphreys, Denver mine-owner; C. Frank Croissant, Florida real estate operator; Mrs. George B. Cox, shrewd wife of a shrewd Ohio politician; and best known of all, a gentleman who peered through his racing-glasses while nearby touts peered at him, recognizing his florid, dignified countenance as that of Financier Harry Payne Whitney, owner of Blondin, whose stable and whose sportsmanship are famous on every track in the U. S.

The Race. "They'r-r-re OFF!"... The long roar thundered like a wave, grumbled like a rising sea-surge through the crowd down the long stretch. The stands seemed to sway, to swell with it; hats and parasols and a foam of faces rose, hesitated for an instant on the top of the wave, settled slowly down into a whisperless silence. The horses moved down the stretch.

It was a perfect start. Johnson on Bubbling Over was out ahead from the eleventh post position; he wouldn't be able to stay there long. Canter and Display, the horses that had been giving the starter such trouble, were running on each side of Pompey. Recollection swerved almost to the outside rail but he was behind the field and there was no interference. They broke at the turn; the thud of their racing-plates sounded incredibly loud, a prolonged piratical drum-roll, in the silence that replaced the crowd's first roar.

"Rockman! Rockman!" screamed a very old lady in the centre stand. She was Mrs Susan Sherley, 95, who saw Aristides win the first Kentucky Derby in 1875. A princess,^1 an alderman^2 who writes poetry, a descendant^3 of a famous merchant, an internationally notorious gambler,4 a yachtsman,5 a former governor6 of Kentucky, and the brother7 of a murderer -- rose suddenly in their seats. Rockman was certainly gaining. He moved up beside Bubbling Over, to his withers, to his shoulder, and then what everyone had waited for happened -- Pompey began to close up.

They were almost at the mile now; it was time for the lightning bay to make his bid. But what was this? Another colt, far back in the ruck, had begun to gain with an effortless, terrific stride, two jumps to one. Nobody could see the jockey's colors. Was this one of the unknowns -- Light Carbine, Roy crofter? They came around the last corner into the homestretch; the strange horse wore E. R. Bradley's silks -- he was Bagen-baggage, running-mate of Bubbling Over. Mr. W. R. Coe looked out, ashen-faced, from his box; Pompey had failed, there was no doubt of it; he had broken at the mile-turn. Bubbling Over was out in front, a sure winner, and his striding stable-brother was closing up behind him, passing the faltering Pompey, cutting down Rockman, nosing out Rhinock. . . .

Jockey Albert Johnson, up on Bubbling Over, sat in the winner's circle with a bunch of American Beauties in his arms. Owner Bradley,* the richer by $50,075 for the Winner's stake alone, let Mayor Walker of New York present him with a golden cup. Bubbling Over had won by five lengths; Bagenbaggage was second; Rockman third.

1 Princess Ida Cantacuzene. 2 Alderman John J. Coughlin. 3 Marshall Field III. 4 Mont Tennes. 5 Sheldon Clark. 6 Ex-Governor Edwin P. Morrow. 7 Foreman N. Leopold.

*This is the second time that Colonel Bradley has placed his horses first and second in the Derby. No other owner has ever done this twice. The only other man who ran a first and second was Commander J . K . L . Ross, who did it in 1919 with Sir Barton and Billy Kelly.