The 1965 Hambletonian was supposed to be a coronation but it wound up being a calamity
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It certainly was a calamity for the favourite Noble Victory, who failed to win even one of the four Hambo heats contested that day.
It was also a calamity for the Du Quoin State Fair in Illinois, where the Hambletonian was then raced, because it took so long to determine a winner that the final heat was raced in darkness at a track without lights.
Muscle Hill comes into Saturday’s Hambletonian as the favourite, having won 12 times in 13 career starts, but in 1965 Noble Victory came into the Hambletonian with 27 wins in 28 lifetime starts. He would have been a heavy favourite, but there was no pari-mutuel betting on the Hambletonian in that era.
Noble Victory was born to Hambletonian greatness and it was assumed that the race itself would simply mark his ascent to the throne. After all, his mother Emilys Pride was one of the few fillies ever to win the Hambletonian and his father Victory Song had been a close second in his Hambletonian. Noble Victory’s only defeat in 28 starts had been a fluke.
Stanley Dancer, the dominant harness horseman of the 1960s, was Noble Victory’s trainer and driver. He reigned over the sport like a king, buying up the choicest horses and turning them into champions. Noble Victory was just one more shining example of Dancer’s special touch.
The big blank spot on Dancer’s resume in 1965 was his lack of a Hambletonian win. He had first driven in the Hambletonian a dozen years earlier, but he’d never made it to the winner’s circle. Noble Victory was the horse that everyone expected would change that.
Certainly Noble Victory had done few things wrong in his career. As a two-year-old, he’d won 18 of his 19 starts. His only loss came when he broke stride in the opening heat of a race after hitting hocks (back knees) on the sulky. Dancer borrowed a larger sulky for his colt and Noble Victory easily won the second and third heat of that race.
It was ominous, however, that Noble Victory’s only loss came at the DuQuoin State Fair where he would return as a three-year-old for his date with destiny in the Hambletonian.
Noble Victory equaled the world speed record for two-year-old trotters and took up his dominance again as the start of his sophomore season. No one could come close to him and the Hambletonian was practically conceded to him before the day dawned.
The calamities of the ’65 Hambletonian began when the day dawned with a downpour. Two inches of rain turned the clay surface of the DuQuoin track into a quagmire. The track crews worked valiantly against the elements and post time was delayed to allow time to prepare the surface.
Noble Victory had a very low heel on his front feet, so Dancer had a bar welded across the back of his front shoes to give him more support. Dancer knew the shoes helped his horse, but might prove to be an impediment on a sticky clay surface.
“I thought he might get over that track better without those bar shoes, but I wasn’t sure,” Dancer said two decades later. “I could’ve kicked myself for not taking those shoes off him before the race, but I didn’t know. If I’d pulled his bar shoes and he had made a break or something, I would have kicked myself then, too.”
Eleven horses entered the Hambletonian, including Egyptian Candor, the understudy to Noble Victory from the Dancer Stable.
The crowd of 35,629 at DuQuoin was stunned as it watched Noble Victory finish ninth to last in the first heat. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Longshot Short Stop wasn’t supposed to win.
In that era, a horse had to win two heats to take home the Hambletonian trophy, so the field returned for a second heat. This time Noble Victory could do no better than seventh, as his stablemate Egyptian Candor won the heat for catch-driver Del Cameron.
That meant a third heat and eight tired trotters returned to the track. This time it was the filly Armbro Flight that won. Noble Victory put in his best effort of the day, but it wasn’t good enough. He was third.
“He would have won that heat if I could’ve gotten through at the rail,” lamented Dancer afterwards.
It was three strikes and out for Noble Victory. He had tried valiantly, but the great colt headed back to the barn without a trophy for the first time in his life.
But still no Hambo entrant had won two heats, so Short Stop, Egyptian Candor, and Armbro Flight returned for a fourth heat at 7:43 p.m. It was nearly dark and the photographers needed flashes to record Eygptian Candor’s narrow victory.
Ironically, not only did Dancer train Egyptian Candor, but his wife Rachel owned the new Hambletonian winner. So he made his way to the winner’s circle, but photos of the presentation show Dancer looking almost shell-shocked at the events of the day. He had hoped to be in the winner’s circle, but not with Egyptian Candor.
After his defeats at DuQuoin in 1964 and ’65, Dancer wasn’t about to let DuQuoin be a permanent blemish on Noble Victory’s career. He shipped him back to southern Illinois as a four-year-old and Noble Victory won in 1:55.3, the fastest trotting race ever in history. That made Noble Victory the fastest trotting stallion ever in the breed.
Noble Victory enjoyed a great career on the track, but the Hambletonian was a day he’d rather forget.
(Dean Hoffman for the Hambletonian Society)