Combination

Calumet Farm and Trainer Ben Jones are hard to beat any time; when Jockey Eddie Arcaro teams up with them, the combination is usually unbeatable. At Churchill Downs last week, they warmed up for the Kentucky Derby by taking the Derby Trial, worth $8,775 to the winner, the Kentucky Oaks ($23,100), and the Debutante Stakes ($11,125). Then they waltzed home with the $96,300 grand prize. The winner: Calumet's Hill Gail.-*

In the one-mile Derby Trial, barrel-chested Hill Gail and banana-nosed Eddie Arcaro romped to a six-length victory in track-record time (1:35.4). The 78th running of the mile-and-a-quarter Derby was almost as easy for them. Breaking from the No. 1 position, they let the fast-stepping Hannibal (7O-to-1) set the pace for the first three-quarters of a mile. Then Hill Gail took off, quickly opened a six-length lead. After that, it was just a matter of hanging on, and the bay did--with only two whacks of Arcaro's bat--to win by a clear two lengths from lightly regarded (23-to-1) Sub Fleet. Two come-from-behinders, Blue Man (second choice at 4-to-1) and Master Fiddle (at 9-to-1), finished third and fourth, beaten ten long lengths.

Hill Gail's time: 2:01.6, one-fifth of a second off the track record held by Whirlaway, the Calumet-Jones-Arcaro winner of the 1941 Derby. Was Hill Gail extended? Said Arcaro: "You don't finish a Derby with anything left."

*By Bull Lea (sire of 33 stakes winners) out of Jane Gail, a Calumet mare named after the wife of Radio Commentator Edwin C. Hill.

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