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I Ha rmatz Uses Head In Every Endeavor Top Rider and Athlete Has Successful Business Touch Too; On Royal Orbit Today CHURCHILL DOWNS, Louisville, Ky., May 1. — A top rated rider, a champion gymnast, and a successful business man in his own right is a combination hard to find these days, but Bill Harmatz fills the bill to perfection. Harmatz valuted into prominence as a rider qui-kly after he had seasoned himself with experience at Caliente, in old Mexico, where he made his debut in the saddle, and later on the California Fair circuit. In his bug year, he rode 265 winners and made the record books by riding six consecutive winners one day at Bay Meadows. Rode Top Performers And, in recent years, he has been aboard such redoubtable campaigners as Round Table, horse of the year 1958, Silky Sullivan, himself, How Now, the iron stake horse of western racing, and Tudor Era, winner, albeit disqualified, in the last running of the Washington, D. C, International at Laurel, to name but a few. As a business man, he specializes in real estate management and ownership, and his current interests in California include a ranch at Chino, apartment houses in Long Beach, and he currently is building a bowling alley at Vista. In addition, he is a full partner in the Turf Construction Company of Arcadia, a firm which is active in the current Southern California building boom and which will take on anything from a house to a subdivision. As a champion gymnast, Harmatz won "all city" honors in Los Angeles representing Roosevelt High on the parallel bars and in tumbling. "When I graduated from high school, and because of my skill on the bars, taken together with my small size, I decided Id like to try riding," observes Harmatz. "Ij took to going to Santa Anita and Hollywood Park as an observer, and figured I could do all right, and after a thorough investigation, decided that Caliente offered the best opportunity in the whole West for a rider just starting out. "I went down to Mexico and hooked up with a man named R. B. Price, and later came under the wing of Bill Merrick, who was training a stable for P. L. Fuller of Texas. I not only got my chance, but had a chance to learn under some of the best horsemen, and understanding offiicals in all the world. "When I was fairly new in California, trainer Frank Childs gave me my first big break by letting me ride Eerseem, and I won my first stake on this horse in the Childrens Hospital Handicap at Bay Meadows. And my first and only Derby horse up to now was the California -owned and bred Honeys Alibi in 1955, and we were unplaced to Swaps." Harmatz, who has ridden on frequent occasion on the East Coast during the last few years, has a not so curious "hobby on his trips of hiring a cab and cruising the city in which he may be and observing real estate and building trends. In his home territory of Southern California, he is an expert appraiser of land and building values. Harmatz, at 28, is now entering his seventh year of riding and has no thought of retiring, but tells me, "when I do retire, Im going to become active full time in real estate. Maybe nobody ever thought about in this way before, but theres a remarkable relationship between race riding and real estate activity. In race riding, you study your horse and try to figure out latent possibilities, or, if a good horse, how to make yourself, as a race rider, develop his potential to the fullest. In real estate, while the yardsticks are different, you still have the same mental challenge, to project a piece of property into the future and visualize its development in accord with your judsment of business and population trends. While both fields are at the extreme ends of the pole, so to speak, the same principles of logical thinking and evaluation apply." If you assume that Bill Harmatz is a "brain" as well as an athlete from the above, you assume correctly.
