Word: raced
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Calumet's own foals begin dropping early each year, no time is lost preparing them for their goal in life?the race track. Halters go on the wobbly legged foals when they are only two days old. Ben Jones and his hard-working farm manager, Paul ("Dutch") Ebelhardt, like horses to get used to human hands early. After that, the Calumet education proceeds with the greatest caution and care. Yearlings, for instance, are legged-up three months before being called on for speed over the farm's three-quarter-mile training track...
Nitwit Champion. Such thoroughness, practiced more in Europe than in the U.S., aims to develop disciplined horses that can adjust to race-track life. But there was one notable exception, a nitwit named Whirlaway, in the 1939 yearling crop...
...Jones recognized Whirlaway as a potentially great horse?even though he was foolish and eccentric off the race track, and completely crazy on it. It took three men to put a saddle on him. In the paddock the horse shook like an aspen. When he went into a turn during a race, no amount of strong-arming by a jockey could keep him from going wide...
...sniff the starting gate, look over the stands. Now & then, Ben would stop to let the horse nibble at some grass. Whirlaway visited the paddock so often that it began to seem like a second home. Gradually the addled horse seemed to realize that there was nothing about a race track that was going to hurt...
Next season it was Armed. So small as a two-year-old that he was gelded "to make him grow some," Armed didn't see much of the race track until he was four. Then he began to take his bows. Still racing, Armed has won more money ($782,175) than any other gelding ever...