Speed & Foresight

By late summer, at least three blue-blooded young horses were running nose-and-nose for the two-year-old championship. The best finisher was chunky, bay Hill Prince, beaten only once--and that time by what his rider, Jockey Eddie Arcaro, confessed was "a damn bad ride." At Saratoga in August, a colt named Middle-ground outran everything in sight, and in the Midwest a streak of bay lightning known as Curtice was winning again & again. According to custom, the three of them should have had it out last week in the Belmont Futurity, the race that decides the juvenile championship.

But not one of them went to the post for the big race. Hill Prince had not been nominated for the Futurity; by the rules of the race all hopefuls had to be nominated back in 1947 before they were born. Curtice had been nominated originally (along with 1,703 others), but his owners let interim payments lapse. Middleground, who was eligible, was simply being saved for next year.

With the cream of the crop absent, a bumper Futurity field of 14 colts and three fillies burst out of the starting gate and began the dash down the Belmont straightaway. Guillotine, a speed horse from Greentree Stable, son of 1939 Futurity Winner Bimelech, shot into the lead. The experts waited to see him chopped down at any moment. But with Jockey Ted Atkinson swinging his whip, Guillotine was still in front after covering six furlongs in i :og, and lasted the additional sixteenth of a mile to win by almost a length from Calumet Farm's highly regarded Theory. In name, if not in fact, the colt that had won a mere $7,250 before last week (Futurity value to the winner: $87,585) was the champion U.S. two-year-old of 1949.

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