Native Dancer by John Eisenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

twenty-one.
    It is doubtful anyone in America celebrated a more bountiful or conspicuous birthday in 1933. At the lowest ebb of the Great
     Depression, Vanderbilt received from his mother Sagamore Farm and a racing stable, a burnt-gold Rolls-Royce, and the lifelong
     services of valet Louis Cheri. From his father’s estate, he received more than $2 million, with three similar payments scheduled
     for his twenty-fifth, thirtieth, and thirty-fifth birthdays. The
New York Times
noted in an article that another Vanderbilt scion had “reached his majority”—turned twenty-one—and was planning to devote
     his money and time to racing thoroughbreds.
    “I went to the races with Margaret once at Hialeah, and she enjoyed it immensely, but Alfred wanted it to be his own show,
     and she graciously gave him the stable,” his friend Clyde Roche said. “For her, it was a circle of people who knew each other
     and enjoyed the racing setting, but I don’t think she had a devotion to it. Alfred certainly did.”
    Looking for horses to improve the stable, which had sagged, Vanderbilt focused on a big, heavy-looking two-year-old named
     Discovery. Sired by Display, a Preakness winner nicknamed the Iron Horse, Discovery was owned by Walter J. Salmon, a New York
     financier who, looking to cut costs, had leased the horse to Adolphe Pons, a horseman whose father had immigrated from France
     and become associated with the Belmont family. Salmon wanted Pons to sell Discovery.
    Stotler began negotiating a price after seeing Discovery win a race, and Vanderbilt, thinking the deal was done, put his silks
     in his car and drove to Saratoga, expecting Discovery to run for him in the Hopeful Stakes. Instead, Salmon and Pons elected
     to let the horse run in Pons’s colors once more, then called off the deal when Discovery ran third, raising his value. After
     several more months of negotiations, Vanderbilt offered $25,000 and left on a four-month hunting expedition in Africa. He
     had been at sea for a day when he received a simply worded telegram from Stotler: “Discovery yours.” It would be the most
     important equine purchase of his life.
    In Africa, Vanderbilt bagged a lion and several elephants, was chased by a rhinoceros, fished with Ernest Hemingway, and met
     Beryl Markham, the female aviator. Upon returning, he jumped excitedly into the business of running a farm and a stable. His
     hunger for knowledge was so intense that Stotler utilized him as an assistant trainer even though he was the boss, dispatching
     him to small tracks to run minor horses, a seemingly thankless job Vanderbilt relished. He ran the stalls and established
     a rapport with the other men on the backstretch, asking for no favors and insisting that he be called Alfred or Al.
    Discovery ran well enough in the spring of 1934 that Vanderbilt took him to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. Sent to the
     post at 12-1 odds, he took a three-length lead into the stretch as jockey Johnny Bejshak furiously worked him. Pandemonium
     reigned in Vanderbilt’s private box. Although Cavalcade rallied to win, Discovery finished second, and Vanderbilt never forgot
     the sensation of holding a lead so late in America’s greatest race. Discovery eventually recorded several major wins that
     year, but he was known more for losing a series of races to Cavalcade.
    Racing as a four-year-old in 1935, Discovery had lost five in a row in the spring and was being dismissed as a disappointment
     when “all of a sudden, he got good,” Vanderbilt recalled in a
Thoroughbred Times
interview in 1993. He won eight straight stakes races in seven weeks in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Detroit, setting several
     track records while enduring an exhausting schedule of train rides. By the end of the year, the horse known as the Big Train
     had traveled nine thousand miles and won eleven stakes races at eight tracks, with handicappers asking him to carry as much
     as 139 pounds. It was a remarkable