The Test of Three-Year-Olds

After the Kentucky Derby, where Alfred G. Vanderbilt's Native Dancer was beaten by a head, horsemen decided that Vanderbilt had been stretching a point when he called the big grey "the first great horse I ever owned." After the Preakness, which Native Dancer won by a neck, this verdict was modified: the Dancer was a fine horse, but he would have to show more before he could be ranked with the Man o' Wars, Citations and Whirlaways. Last week, in the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes, racing's most exacting test for three-year-olds, the Dancer proved his right to rank with the best.

The horse that helped him prove it was a stubborn bay colt named Jamie K., the same Jamie K. that had come within a neck of beating him in the Preakness, and with the same Eddie Arcaro up. In the Belmont last week, after a moderately paced (1:39 1/3) mile, Jamie K. and the Dancer left the others behind and made it a two-horse race. Jamie K. had the lead with three-eighths of a mile to go. Could the Dancer catch him?

Native Dancer could and did, though, pounding down the home stretch for the last quarter-mile, the two horses were never more than half a length apart. Reported the Dancer's jockey, Eric Guerin: "After he got in front, he began to loaf, as usual. So I hit him three or four times just to keep him at work." The Dancer stayed on the job long enough to win by a neck in a dashing 2:283/5, one of the fastest Belmont Stakes in history, and just two-fifths off the record set by Count Fleet in 1943 and tied by Citation in 1948.

The Dancer, winning his 14th race in 15 starts, brought his total earnings to $522,745, eighth place among alltime winners. Horsemen could finally agree that 1953 would go down as the Dancer's year; it was also apparent that Jamie K., owned , by International Boxing Club President Jim Norris, looked like a horse of the year in almost any year but the Dancer's.

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