Grand National

By 9 a.m. the trams were crowded and along the roads to Aintree lumbered busses filled with girls nibbling chocolate bars, clerks in their Sunday suits, gentlemen with binoculars who made notes on the margins of their form charts. By 11 a.m. the bookmakers were on their platforms shouting odds soon to be changed: "Fifty to one against the field except Easter Hero!" All morning there were long lines of bettors at the windows of the new "tote" (totalizator) machines.

The sky, which had been misty, brightened before the trippers opened their sandwich baskets. On a barge moored in the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Valentine's Brook, the Duke of Westminster and his friends quaffed scotch & soda. They were watched, from the Royal stand built several years ago for the Prince of Wales, by a wide-eyed group of Swedish excursionists. The grandstand and enclosure were nearly filled toward noon, when an agitated hare came humping down the home stretch, crossed the finish line and dodged into the paddock. . . .

In the paddock, the horses stood easy and quiet. Cyril R. Taylor's Grakle, a brown gelding nine years old who had run in the Grand National four times and only finished once, nibbled wisps of hay in comparative obscurity; he was a 100-to-6 shot. Gregalach, the chestnut gelding who won in 1929, pawed the ground without enthusiasm while his fanciers flocked around. Thickest of all was the crowd looking at John Hay ("Jock") Whitney's Easter Hero, favorite at odds of 8-to-1.

The warning bell rang and the horses danced slowly through a lane in the crowd from the paddock to the track--Easter Hero first, then Glangesia, Ballasport, Kakuskin and 39 others.

Watched by 300,000 people (100,000 of them women) they stood for a few seconds jostling at the line, then broke in the confusion of a false start. A moment later the field broke again, this time gathering speed and narrowing together as they went past Sefton Yard. Every horse went over the first fence. At Becher's Brook, Swift Roland fell and was killed when the horse behind him landed on his head. The first time past the stands, Easter Hero was ahead, with Gregalach second and Grakle, Shaun Goilin (last year's winner), Solanum, and a half-dozen others bunched close behind.

As they went "into the country" for the second time, Grakle began to move up. At Becher's Brook again, Solanum fell, then Easter Hero. Great Span went down at the Canal fence. At Valentine's Brook Drin fell with a broken leg, was later shot. Coming into the "race course," the long gentle curve that ends the 47-mile Grand National steeplechase, Gregalach, Grakle and Ballasport were in the lead together. R. Lyall up on Grakle cleared the last fence first, swung in to the rail.

In the grandstand, a British radio announcer tried to tell the world about the finish. "Grakle is still there. Grakle is still there. Grakle is out in front. Gregalach is second and Ballasport third. Grakle is there and Gregalach is there. It is a terrific race. No, I think Grakle will win it. It is a terrific race. Gregalach will win it. Grakle has got it. Gregalach is second and Ballasport third.

"I made a mistake. Annandale is third and not Ballasport. . . . The official result has been put up. The winner is Grakle, second horse is Gregalach. third horse is Annandale." Fourth was Rhyticere.

The three persons most concerned with the result of the Grand National were not at Aintree. One was Emilio Scala, the proprietor of a coffee shop in London, who had Grakle's ticket in the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes. Another was Clayton C. Woods, the woodwork inspector at Fisher Body's Shops in Buffalo, N. Y. The third was George P. Dyamond, who runs a hotel in Cape Town, South Africa and who, because he had been unable to sell a half interest in his ticket on Annandale, won $590,905.

When informed that he had won $1,723,083, Emilio Scala shouted: "Now I will, go to my village of Isola and settle down." He said he would share his winnings with the 39 members of his family who had pooled $2.50 to buy the ticket, employ physicians for his ailing wife.

In Buffalo, Clayton Woods, who with four other members of his family held Gregalach's ticket, worth $886,360* explained that he had been unemployed for a week because, after it was known his ticket was for Gregalach, "my fellow employes would not let me work. They congratulated me and promised me everything and the boss told me to get out." Workman Woods announced that he would purchase his wife "an Easter outfit . . . buy that horse Gregalach and keep him in a velvet-lined stall," and give up his job.

Next day Workman Woods paid a long visit to a barber shop, then inspected his letters. Said he: "A lot of them have been from women who want to know where they can buy tickets on the race next year. . . . There are a whole lot more women after that information than men." Also after lottery information were Buffalo police who arrested one William H. Paschal, charged him with being chief agent for the quick distribution of $50,000 worth of tickets in the "Kentucky Derby sweepstakes, "/-

In London, J. Harpman, half-owner of the Irish sweepstakes ticket on Easter Hero, was told the favorite had not finished. "Well, never mind," said he. "Now, someone give me a cup of tea."

*The U. S. Treasury Department calculated it would have to have $187,085 of this sum as income tax. New York State will appropriate $20,378 of what is then left. The Irish and British Governments ignore price monies as an object of taxation.

/-Statute 213 of the Federal Criminal Code forbids mailing lottery information, before or after the prizes are won. But U. S. periodicals are, by Federal indulgence, allowed to break the letter of the law and send through the mails news accounts of lotteries. This year the Irish Sweepstakes were world's largest, outrunning even the famed Calcutta Sweeps on the British Derby. Irish sweepstake tickets were peddled in the U. S. by race track bookies or by salesmen who brought them over from Dublin in books of twelve at $2.50 each, the salesman receiving two tickets free from each book sold.

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