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OUR DAD ROOTERS The Jnrnhce*; Mice Pntrirp rinht in whose colors Our Dad runs; Mr. and Mrs. Hirsch Jacobs second and third from the right; John second from left, who trains the colt, along with his dad, and Isidor Bieber left, co-breeder of the Palestinian colt. All will be present today at Churchill Downs for the big race. Hirsch Jacobs Winningest Trainer Has Saddled Over 3,000 Winners Daughters Our Dad Named For Famous Horseman; Ran Smashing Race in Wood By TOM OREILLY CHURCHILL DOWNS, Louisville, Ky., May 1. — Conditioned by literature and Hollywood films, the average man should be forgiven if he pictures a thoroughbred horse trainer as a bucolic apple-knocker whose most noticeable features are a prominent Adams apple, a straw between his teeth, sleeve garters and a hick drawl. After all, for centuries horse racing has been a country sport closely associated with hoe and hay mow. Consequently, motorized Johnny-come-latelies to the sport of kings often are surprised to learn that the professional who has saddled more winners than any other trainer in the world is 57-year-old Hirsch Jacobs, a product of New Yorks teeming sidewalks who learned, as a city boy, to train natures champions by racing crack carrier pigeons from a Manhattan rooftop. Now, securely ensconced in the National Museum of Racings Hall of Fame at Saratoga, the alert, red-haired Jacobs has turned his famed, keen, blue eyes toward the Kentucky Derby, bringing the homebred son of Palestinian, Our Dad, owned by his pretty daughter, Patrice, to Churchill Downs. Reveillion First Winner Any effort to put Jacobs magnificent record into one short article would merely inundate the reader with statistics. He saddled his first winner, Reveillion, in 1926, in New Orleans. Since then he has had nearly 3,000 more. For 11 of 12 years, between 1933 and 1944, he led the national list in winners and has been tops in New York State for 21 of the last 26 years. He is famed for having claimed Stymie, for ,500, from King Ranch. The horse went on to become a great champion and the founder of Jacobs breeding dynasty. He bought Searching from Ogden Phipps, for 5,000 and she won around 80,000. Some of his other famous claims were Action and Caballero, H. Since 1928, Jacobs has been associated with Isidor Bieber as a racing and breeding partner. His training establishment is a close-knit family affair. Many of the horses run in the name of Mrs. Ethel D. Jacobs. His sons, John, 24 and Tom, 18, are both active in racing with John training a division of the stable. Our Dad was Patrices first horse. Her others are Marymount miss, a two-year-old filly named for Mary-mount College, which she attended; Remember History, a three-year-old daughter of Palestinian, and Basil Bee, a 7-year-old jumper. One of six sons, whose 88-year-old father still attends the races, Hirschs brothers are the late Harry, who managed the Stymie Manor Farm, at Monkton, Md., before his death in 1955; Irving, 58, a Brooklyn physician; Albert, 52, a licensed assistant trainer; Sid, 50, a trainer, and Eugene, 42, also a trainer. The fact that Our Dad is Patrices first horse is significant and indicative of Jacobs vaunted "eye for a horse." The Jacobs racing establishment includes nearly 300 horses. He has 40-odd in training, plus the broodmares, in Kentucky, with other racers on his farms at Monkton, Md. and Riverside, Calif. "He looked like the best in th£ lot and I wanted to get Patrice a good one," smiles Jacobs. Patrice gratefully named the colt for her father. A delightful, young lady, with light brown hair and her fathers blue eyes, Patrice, who cant quite decide whether to make up like Debbie Reynolds or Jane Powell, both of whom she resembles, is also definitely a city girl. She was named i | after Mrs. Damon Runyon, wife of the late writer, for whom Hirsch used to train a ! few horses. Unraced as a 2-year-old, Our Dad won | two of his 10 starts — once at Santa Anita | and once at Jamaica — before being shipped to Kentucky. His bang-up performance, j finishing third to Manassa Mauler and I First Landing, in the Wood Memorial, won him the Kentucky assignment. He | was running fastest of the three at the | | finish, but bore in and Pete Anderson his j i jockey had no place to go. " "I dont believe in saving race horses for the future," smiled Jacobs when asked j if he had preserved Our Dad, as a two-1 year-old, with an eye toward the classic races. "I once tried that. It didnt work. I bought what might well have been one I I J of the best horses I ever owned — Sheldon | 1 Ducret — from Max Hirsch. He was a big, I growing horse and I decided to save him | as a 2-year-old. Well, I saved him and | one day, at Saratoga, he got caught in a rope in his stall. He injured himself so i | ! | | I I badly that he never got to the races. That cured me. If Our Dad had been able to run last year he would have run. He has big bones. He was continually bucking his shins. However, as it is, I am very happy with his improvement. He is a very green horse, right now. But he leams in every race and this Charge of The Light Brigade, at Churchill Downs may be just the thing for him." Pleased With Horses Condition Here it seemed proper to ask Miss Jacobs if she was satisfied with her trainer. After all, other lady owners have been known to discharge their trainers in a fit of pique. "I am very well pleased with the horses condition and the way he has been handled," she said, with a broad smile. "In fact I had better be or Ill be put out of the house. As a matter of fact, Im wild I about Our Dad and my dad, too. Thats what I wanted to name the horse, at first — My Dad — but The Jockey Club wouldnt accept ] it, so we settled for Our Dad." I Asked if he ever had any difficulty "cooling out" his pretty owner, Hirsch 1 laughed and said, "Shes a good girl. Had a job, yknow, making television appear - 1 ances for that Kentucky Tobacco Com- I pany, that gives away a horse in an ad- l vertising contest. She got on the air one 1 night with a lady who was a trotting fan ! and crowing about how the trotters draw i bigger betting crowds than the runners. ! I told her, if that ever happened again, j to say that if the flat horses ever run at I night the trotters will have to go back j to the county fairs. Id like to be quoted on that." Hirsch is a running horse man. East Side, West Side, all around the town ! ! !
