On to Louisville

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt was asked to compare Native Dancer with "the other good horses" he has owned. Vanderbilt answered briefly, with an all-sufficient distinction : "Native Dancer is the first great horse I've ever owned." Most of the 40,000 racing fans at Jamaica Race Track one day last week shared Owner Vanderbilt's conviction. Coupled with his stablemate, Social Outcast, the unbeaten Dancer was a 1-10 favorite to win the $100,000 Wood Memorial at a mile and an eighth, the longest race he had ever been called upon to run.

Following what has now become almost standard procedure, Jockey Eric Guerin held the big (16 hands, 1,120 Ibs.) grey just off the pace set by Tahitian King, runner-up to the Dancer in last season's Belmont Futurity. A length apart they ran, for most of the race, the Dancer trailing on the outside, with other potential Kentucky Derby entrants stretched out behind. At the top of the homestretch, Jockey Guerin eased up his tight rein and let his colt run. With only one stimulating whack of the whip, Native Dancer went under the wire an easy 4 1/2 lengths in front. The time: 1:50 1/4, not sensationally fast, but as usual, fast enough.

During the winter, horsemen engaged in lively argument as to whether Native Dancer could spread his speed over a distance; there is more sprint than stay in his bloodlines. But the Dancer's performance in the mile-and-an-eighth Wood satisfied a good many doubters. Said his trainer, Bill Winfrey, no doubter: "He looks as if he could run all day."

The chief remaining question, as the Dancer was shipped to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby this week, seemed to be whether any three-year-old in sight can beat him. At week's end, track fans singled out one sturdy possibility: a California-bred colt named Correspondent, which has never run against Native Dancer before. In his own final prep for the Derby last week, Correspondent romped home five lengths ahead to win the mile-and-an-eighth Blue Grass Stakes at Lexington, Ky. With canny Jockey Eddie Arcaro up, Correspondent ran the distance in 1:49, a fifth of a second faster than the track record held by Calumet Farm's famed Coaltown.

Correspondent's flashy victory impressed the Agua Caliente bookmakers enough to knock his odds down to 2-1 in the Derby. Even so, Native Dancer, now rated at even money, may be an odds-on favorite by Derby post time.

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