Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-29
BIG BETTING COUPS

CHEEPSHEAD BAY twelve years ago
- was not the Sheepshead Bay Of to-day,
with we'll kept flower gardens, magnificent
Lawns, and a track the equal OF any IN
TIE metropolitan racing circuit. And yet
even IN those DAYS it was known as q track
here the bOokma kers seldom announced
a limit. If the betting ring was COM
paTatively small, the bets were frequently
large; men with small wads who under
took TO mount stool and chalk up the
odds We're likely to borrow carfare before
many DAYS had passed. 1t is not surprIs
ing, therefore, that it was at this race
course that the most successful betting
coup Of the American turf was engineered
a dozen wears ago Nor is it surprising
that the general who directed the opera
tons should have been that most daring
Yet most scientific plunger, George +.
Smith. more generally known to race goers
as Pittsburgh Phil.
One year before his big clean up Smith
had purchased for twelve hundred dollars
a yearling known as King Cadmus. With
that unerring judgment which gained for
him a fortune of nearly three million dol
lars and which kept him from serious
disaster during the whole of a long career
as an owner and bettor. this strange
secretive gambler recognized that he had
a bargain The yearling was Immediately
shipped into the country to be trained
under the eye of the one man whom
Smith could or would trust-his brother
William Reports from the training quar-
tiers. coupled with personal clocking at
trials, fully justified every expectation,
and arrangements were soon made to
enter the horse as a twO-year-old at the
Sheepshead Bay meeting Fred Taral, at
that time one of the cleverest jockeys in
the United States (he has ridden ex-
clusively in Austria for the last several
years., was engaged without flourish of
trumpets for the race.
Several horses of decided class were en-
tered in the same event; but the fact that p
Phil owned King Cad1nus caused most of t
makers to be somewhat wary. A sharp eye
open for the commissioners who transacted
operations for the plunger None Of them
III the ring. however, and so all of the book
with King Cadmus quoted at ten to one, v
pearcd to be very conservative figures III VII
past performances Of some Of the other en-
Shortly after the price had been cha
Pittsburgh Phil stroled into the ring, made
of two hundred dollars on his horse, and VIZ
without bothering the other bookmakers.
diately. the public appeared to 60 crazy on
jeCt of King Cadmus'S chances, and at leas
of strangers went up and down the line b
hundreds, until the price had been hammer
to seven to one and the start of the ia
further speculation impossible. The boo
were very happy, being satisfied that if Phi
tended to make a killing he would never
Peared in person. and certainly would not h
content to bet paltry two hundred dolla
his presence and the single bet had helped
wonderfully Every amateur from New \
from other cities who had heard the wins
the plr1nger was betting on his own horse
tened to put down large sums. To make a
doubly sure. every commissioner who had e
business for the owner of King Cadmus
seen, and had sworn by all the gods of hor
that Phil was not betting a dollar more
two hundred dollars which he had staked
But when from points of vantage they
Iesorting to the whip, and when in the las
yards that whip descended sharply just 0
King CadInu5 fairly jumped in front Of Il