Poor Jack—his Horse Ran Out

Breasley was more tactful in his post-race comments: "I think Carry Back is a very nice mile-and-a-quarter horse, and if he wins at a mile and a half it is not going to be in top company." This, of course, had been the opinion of many Carry Back observers long before Price decided to take him to France. Pace was to have been a determining factor in this race. And indeed it was, but the way it worked out it was hardly to Carry Back's advantage. For example, while Breasley was taking Carry Back to the rear of the pack at the beginning, the leaders were running the first quarter in 28 seconds. They ran the final six furlongs in 1:10�, and the final time of 2:30[4/5] was the fastest Arc ever. It becomes obvious that no stretch runner on earth can afford to let his field dawdle through a snail's-pace first quarter, lose ground all the way when the real running starts and then hope to make up 15 or more lengths in the last quarter. It can't be done by Carry Back or any other horse.

When it was all over Sunday night, Jack and Katherine Price were not really upset. "It was a horse race, and we've lost them before," said Katherine. "We lost our money [some 515,300 for the trip] on the gamble," said Jack, "but at the same time we did prove that it is feasible for an American horse to come over and run in this sort of race. The trouble is that there were a dozen or so horses in there with no right to start." The trouble is, also, that if you had tried to eliminate horses with no right to start you would have taken out the 40-to-1-shot winner. As even Price had to admit as he stood outside Longchamp, grin and all, with his upturned bowler jokingly held out to accept tips from the crowd, that's just what horse racing is all about. "The trip has been fun," he said, "and we'd do it again anytime."

It had been fun, indeed, until the race. Price's enthusiasm for his horse became wildly infectious in cosmopolitan Paris. As this little man moved among the sophisticates, dispensing ad lib bon mots with the aplomb of a modern Passepartout, the Carry Back-Jack Price fan club grew almost overnight to the proportions of a new political party. If Carry Back had many disadvantages on this invasion, Price considered that he and Katherine really only had one. "We should have taken a 25-hour crash course in French," he complained while trying to get a point over to a foreign reporter. But, speaking in English (the only French he actually mastered was "ham and eggs," which he pronounced jam-bone and oofs), Price made his points and made himself a hit.

He brought along a movie of Carry Back's winning races and showed it to the press and racing officials at a Jockey Club reception. He showed it also in the gilt, chandelier-draped salon at the Circles Interalli�, where more than 100 members of the American Club of Paris gather every Thursday to lunch and listen to distinguished American guest speakers. On the Thursday before Price made his appearance the members had listened to the retiring U.S. Ambassador to France, James M. Gavin. Jack Price gave them a talk on horses, undoubtedly not the text of such former speakers as Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Estes Kefauver and John F. Kennedy. Price's effect on this kind of gathering is remarkable. One old gaffer, who admitted he thought Man o' War was a trotter, made immediate plans to attend the Arc. Others, including many employees of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, got up a pool on the race, the first time that had happened. By post time Sunday it was evident that this French classic would be witnessed by more Americans than had ever before been aware of the sport in Paris.

It also was apparent that a Carry Back victory would do more for the cause of international racing than all the involved and futile round-table conferences. Well, he didn't win. But somehow international racing found itself advanced. So did some other international-type items, like goodwill—between France and the U.S., at least, if not between the U.S. and Australia.