Milton Polinger’s multiple stakes winner Court Ruling, a 4-year-old son of Traffic Judge purchased out of a paddock sale at Belmont as a non-winner of two for $32,000 the previous December, was retired and set to stud at his owner’s farm in Olney, Md. Bred by C.V. Whitney, the blaze-faced chestnut had become one of the nation’s best turf horses of 1974, his biggest win the $125,000 Hollywood Invitational Handicap.
Court Ruling stood one year in Maryland before moving to California after the separation of Polinger and his wife Helen. Two stakes winners came out of that first crop – stakes-producing filly Out Ruled and Eclipse Award-winning sprinter Guilty Conscience.
Snowden Carter covered the story of Rock Talk –“one of Maryland’s hottest sires” – and his owner Michael Erlanger. The 10-year-old was standing at Edgar Lucas’ Helmore Farm in Woodbine.
“The name ‘Erlanger’ is, of course, an old one in the Thoroughbred business,” wrote Carter. “But most of the reputation achieved for the Erlangers can be attributed to Michael’s mother, the late Mrs. Milton Erlanger. It was she, along with her late husband, who so successfully operated the Woodside Stud in New Jersey, and it was also she who purchased Maryland-bred Rock Talk from his breeder, Mrs. Joseph Walker, as a yearling.”
From two crops to race in 1974, Rock Talk was the sire of stakes winners Kudara and Talc. Also standing at Helmore, managed by John Williams, was Lucas’ Northern Jove. A stakes-winning son of Northern Dancer who entered stud that spring, he was described as “the spitting image of his great-grandsire Native Dancer.”
Windfields Farm owner E.P. Taylor became the world’s leading living breeder of stakes winners. Previously tied with C.V. Whitney with 156 a piece, Taylor’s number grew to 160 over the summer. The all-time mark of 192 belonged to Harry Payne Whitney.
The Chilton Book Company in Radnor, Pa., released the book Secretariat, by photo-journalist Raymond G. Wolfe Jr. It was described as a “never-before-published look into the world of that big beautiful chestnut who so captured the imagination of America.” One of many books about the Virginia-bred legend, this one is a classic for the photographs alone.
