Black Beauty

When big, rangy, almost coal-black Noor arrived in the U.S. two years ago, most of the cards were stacked against him. The Irish-bred three-year-old had to get used to running on dirt tracks, instead of the springy turf he raced over in England when he finished third in the Epsom Derby. Besides that, the colt had a bad ankle, which kept him on the shelf for months.

This December, veteran Jockey Johnny Longden began riding Noor, and talking him up as the horse to beat in the $100,000-added Santa Anita Handicap. Longden said Noor was "maybe the best horse I've been on since Count Fleet," winner of the Triple Crown in 1943.

As the eleven Handicap starters paraded to the post last week, the crowd of 65,000 was betting the all-powerful Calumet Farm entry--Citation, Ponder and Two Lea--as though it was money in the bank. With the Calumet trio at 1-to-3, Noor was a lukewarm 6-to-1 second choice. At that, it seemed a surprisingly short price considering the opposition. But as it turned out, Longden knew best.

Noor, a stretch driver from way back, was flying at the far turn. At the head of the homestretch, he collared Calumet's pace-setting filly Two Lea-at the eighth pole he pulled away. Citation, closing well under his burden of 132 Ibs., led the Calumet varsity as Two Lea and Ponder carried the devil-red & blue silks across the finish line in formation.

Said Jockey Longden: "We just sighted the wire and set sail." It was fast sailing. With a 22-lb. pull in the weights, Noor (whose 110-lb. package was 3 Ibs. less than Two Lea's and 14 less than Ponder's) had run the mile-and-a-quarter in two minutes flat--just a fifth of a second off the world record and 1 1/3 seconds faster than the track record set by Seabiscuit in the same race ten years ago.

To silver-haired Owner Charles S. Howard, who bought the horse on a tip from Prince Aly Khan, Noor's victory was worth $97,900. It was the third time in 13 runnings of the big race that Howard had taken the grand prize; in 1939 he won with an Argentine horse named Kayak II, in 1940 with Seabiscuit.

For Calumet, which had also failed in 1947 with its great gelding Armed, Trainer Jimmy Jones had no excuses, and for the horse that has never run worse than second, he had no apologies. At the weights, Citation ran a great race. Still, Jones thought he might be "losing a little of his enthusiasm for racing. He doesn't seem so anxious as he did when he was young."

At Florida's Hialeah Park last weekend, another Calumet favorite flopped at 7-to-10 odds. Coaltown, co-holder of the world record at a mile-and-a-quarter, showed a flash of early foot in the $50,000-added Widener Handicap, then flattened out like a claiming plater. He finished next to last, beaten ten lengths by Royal Governor.

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