Horse Racing: Passing of the Ghost

He was one of U.S. sport's first great television heroes, the Saturday idol of millions, long before anyone heard of Arnie Palmer or Wilt the Stilt or Johnny...

Sport: On to Louisville

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt was asked to compare Native Dancer with "the other good horses" he has owned. Vanderbilt answered briefly, with an all-sufficient...

Sport: Superlative Colt

At New York's Jamaica race track last week, even the hardbitten pros felt a twinge of excitement as a powerful, dark grey colt named Native Dancer went to the...

Sport: Native Dancer's Sire

As a race horse, Polynesian proved his worth by winning the Preakness Stakes and 26 other races, earned a total of $310,410. At stud (since 1948), he has...

Sport: Eddie Concedes

In race after race, Jockey Eddie Arcaro had seen the big grey colt pound in ahead of his own mounts. A month ago, Arcaro's sour grapes—a rare item with...

Sport: 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...

Sport: By a Neck

In the first dash for the rail at Pimlico's Preakness last week, Kentucky Derby Winner Dark Star shot into the lead. Dark Star had beaten Alfred Vanderbilt's...

Saratoga Auction: The Very Elegant Crap Game

The son of a Hall of Fame horseman (Bill Winfrey, trainer of Native Dancer), TIME Correspondent Carey Winfrey spent his first 15 Augusts in Saratoga Springs,...

Horse Racing: What Price Now?

The grey colt was a son of the great Native Dancer, but he had chronically "mushy" (swollen) ankles, and it seemed he might never get to the races. So Owner...

Cover: The Big Grey

(See Cover) The memory of the true champion lives on for generations after the mathematics of his achievement have been forgotten. His epitaph is not the...