Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 37 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
gripes about —• that race to
this day.
We were in attendance, too, when a litde slip of a horse named Canonero II won the Derby in 1971. He was so crooked that his trainer said he moved like a fiddler crab. He was sold to Venezuela for $ 1,200 and was ridiculed when he turned up at Churchill Downs the week before the Derby. (We don’t think Canonero was aware of the taunts, however, since he spoke only Spanish.)
So freakish was this horse and his connections that his trainer, a hard-working 32-yearold from the slums of Caracas, Juan Arias, was deliberately not invited to the annual trainer’s dinner held the night before the big race. Arais didn’t complain; he let his little fiddler crab do the talking the next afternoon.
Breaking in a tangle from the starting gate, Canonero remained near the back of the 20horse field at first But with a turn of foot that left me and Dad gasping, the Spanish rocket passed the remaining 17 horses that were in front of him as they turned for home. From our viewpoint it kx>ked like the others were snubbed to the eighth pole.
Canonero is with me and Dad now. We’re still trying to teach him Knglish.
My friend Jimmy Winkfield is here now, too. Wink was such a kind man, though for some reason the white men around the track called him “boy.” I thought him much smarter than a mere boy, though.
One fine April morning in 1902 when we were exercising,
-SeeTALE/page 18
75.1%