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H A JIMMY1 JONES and his father BEN A JONES Keeping Up With Joneses Not Easy Benjimmy HaveGiven Fellow Trainers Run Last 36 Years FatherSon Combination Top Team in Developing Derby Winners Which Number Six SixBy By JOE HIRSCH HIRSCHCHURCHHiL CHURCHHiL DOWNS Louisville Ky May 4 Keeping up with the Jones boys Ben and Jimmy has been no easy task for their fellow trainers throughout the country over the past 36 years Even in the past several seasons when the devils red banner of Calumet was not as prom ¬ inent in stakes competition as it had been in the days of the Citations and the Armeds and the Twilight Tears and the Whirlaways the patience and the under ¬ standing of the Joneses Ben the father and Jimmy the son their skill at their profession their way with a horse if you will kept the vast Calumet racing enter ¬ prises on an even if slightly subdued keel Now with the emergence of such promis ¬ ing threeyearolds as Sharpsburg East gate Liberty Sun and Pintor LeaFabius who will contest this eightysecond Ken ¬ tucky Derby Saturday plus a barnful of highlyregarded twoyearolds of excep ¬ tional breeding and conformation its extremely probable that once again the whole town or more accurately the whole nation will be talking about the Jones boys Jimmy Took Over Training Duties in 1948 1948The The record of the Joneses in Derby com ¬ petition is unequalled and is unique in ways other than the mere fact that theyve saddled six winners in the Churchill Downs classic since 1938 It is for instance necessary to consider the father and the son as a team in developing and training their horses particularly since 1948 when B A officially at least turned over the training duties to Jimmy and became gen ¬ eral manager of the Calumet racing inter ¬ ests However Plain Ben Jones ramrod straight at 72 will remain primarily a horseman as long as he lives and he has continued to play an active role on the race track With the vast Calumet stable frequently extended over several racing centers B A is often called upon to su ¬ pervise the actual training of one division while Jimmy has another group elsewhere and Ben can still saddle a horse with any man Even as this is being written there has been no decision as to who will tighten the girth on FabiusPintor Lea Saturday afternoon But the program credit matters little actually for B A and Jimmy both have made significant contributions toward the arrival of the two colts in the Chur ¬ chill Downs paddock and it is impossible to credit one without doing injustice to the other otherBenjamin Benjamin Allyn Jones the squire of Parnell Missouri grew up in a primitive atmosphere of racing competition by matching quarter horses against neighbor ¬ ing Indians His experience with thorough ¬ breds dates back to around 1910 when he campaigned the 13yearold Einstein around the bush tracks of the midwest B A also became interested in breeding at the same time and eventually stood a horse called Seth a son of AdamPurity by Deceiver who had raced for Sam Hil dreth The Seths were speed horses and their success made Jones famous through out the hinterlands Captain Seth for in ¬ stance foaled in 1921 won 13 out of 19 starts as a twoyearold and was never out of the money In all more than 200 winners of races on recognized tracks were produced at Jones Stock Farm FarmAssumed Assumed Woolford Post in 1932 1932In In 1932 after years of training cheap horses for himself and for Tom Worden B A took over the powerful Woolford Farm of the KansasCitian Herbert M Woolf Almost immediately he proved to toContinued Continued on Page 38 D Wir Keepitig UpWiih Jones Boys Ben and Jimmy No Easy Task FatherSon Combination Top Team in Developing Derby Winners Which Number Six SixContinued Continued from Page 50 50the the major turf circles what the bushes knew for years that he was a pro when it came to training horses In 1938 he sad ¬ dled his first Derby winner with Lawrin then left Woolford in 1939 and has been with Calumet ever since In the meantime Horace Allyn Jones now 49 was develop ¬ ing into a pretty fair horsemen himself under his dads close supervision Jimmy who has been called nothing but since he was a youngster saddled his first winner Nose Dive at New Orleans in 1926 Hed grown up on the family farm of course and galloped horses for B A in the days whenj they couldnt afford much help Jones Sr insisted that his son attend Northwestern Missouri State Teachers College to learn animal husbandry but Jimmy wanted to be around B A and the horses and after completing most of the course gave it up for the racetrack racetrackHave Have Philosophy for Race RaceSince Since 1941 the Joneses have sent out Whirlaway Pensive Citation Ponder and Hill Gail to win the Derby In the course of their long familiarity with the Run for the Roses theyve developed a Derby phil ¬ osophy which Plain Ben propounded to Oscar Otis on another May afternoon Youve often heard it said that the Derby has knocked out more good horses than it j has developed that many horses have been j ruined going all out for this one race Nothing could be further from the truth I will grant that some horses have been knocked out getting ready for the Derby and racing in it because it is a severe test of class For that reason it is a true classic But its ruining of a horse has in my opi ¬ nion been due to the failure of the train ¬ ers either to give their horse a proper j chance or to poor timing There is one secret if it may lie called a secret and one only in training a horse for the Derby Make sure that you get proper foundation I under the horse If a threeyearold has that firm foundation you cant knock him out or harm him no matter what you do except through sheer stupidity Once a j horse is fit he will give you everything he has without knocking himself out One thing about the Joneses They dont mince words Both have always been out ¬ spoken about prominent turf problems and have in the past taken pot shots at their bete noires when invited to do guest col ¬ umns in DAILY RACING FORM Their battles with racing secretaries over too wide a spread of weights in handicaps have long been legend with racetrackers At the same time the respect in which theyre held by their confreres a respect not only for their complete skill in and understanding of their profession and their great pa ¬ tience and talent in developing young I horses but of the father and the son as men themselves this respect is the highest honor that the turf world can offer to a horseman A victory for Fabius Pintor Lea this afternoon would be something akin to gilding an already brilliant lily
