Word: stagehand
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...Santa Anita Handicap, grand finale of the 57-day meet. As the field of 15 three-year-olds paraded to the post, Sun Egret was the favorite and William du Font's Dauber had a large following; but hunch players and a few sentimentalists were betting on Stagehand, a shiny bay colt owned by Maxwell Howard of Dayton, Ohio...
Last year Stagehand finished his two-year-old season a maiden (a horse that has never won a race). But this winter, in the theatrical setting at Santa Anita, Stagehand blossomed into a star, won three races in a row. Racing fans all knew that the incomparable Earl Sande, most famed jockey of modern times, was Maxwell Howard's trainer. Because Earl Sande in his riding days had won 967 races (including three Kentucky Derbies and five Belmont Stakes), earned $3,000,000 for his employers, and had the reputation of being able to do more with a horse...
Into a jam is precisely where Stagehand got. With able Jockey Jack Westrope up, he was twelfth at the start, eleventh at the half-mile post, still in the ruck coming into the stretch. But the wiseacres had not counted on Stagehand's fine sense of drama. In time's nick, like the hero of a Wild West thriller, Stagehand lengthened out, swept wide around the pack, past Sun Egret, past Dauber, won by half a length...
...Trainer Sande, a familiar little figure in unfamiliar clothes, rushed over to Stagehand, plopped a kiss on his nose and led him back to the winner's circle, the jampacked grandstands roared. Looking a little ill at ease without his whip, 39-year-old Earl Sande tipped his hat and grinned. It was his first major victory* in seven years as a trainer...
Like a true Hollywood star, Stagehand had earned $42,775 in less than two minutes, promptly became a favorite for the Kentucky Derby...