LEE AXWORTHY 63 



chance that made him. His career as a three-year-old was 

 such as to stamp him among the truly great, his race in the 

 Kentucky Futurity being enough to lift him to a high plane 

 among trotters. 



It was as a four-year-old that he both shone brightly in 

 the trotting firmament and also went into an eclipse which 

 at one time threatened to be total and final. He again 

 proved his worth as a game, consistent race horse then fell a 

 victim to a mysterious sickness and was retired for the year. 

 In midsummer Mr. Andrews suff^ered a sunstroke that per- 

 manently retired him from the ranks of active trainers and 

 race drivers and Lee Axworthy was placed in the hands of 

 Mr. Ben F. White whose consummate skill and care kept Lee 

 Axworthy on the road to fame that Mr. Andrews had blazed. 

 It is easy to say that a trainer was ''handed a horse ready- 

 made*' but, as Mr. Sanders has already pointed out in his 

 chapter on Lou Dillon, a very fast trotter is much like a 

 violin which put away at night all in tune must be tuned up 

 again the next day. So Mr. White at least had to keep Lee 

 Axworthy in tune. That he did and did it well is history 

 and no chapter in the life of that worthy gentleman is 

 brighter than the one which tells of his great success with 

 Lee Axworthy. And it is with that we now are about to deal. 



In the hands of Mr. White, during the season of 1916, 

 Lee Axworthy trotted five diff^erent miles in two minutes or 

 better and won the stallion crown at Lexington, Ky., October 

 4th, with his grand mile in l:58l4' The ability with which 

 this great trotter was kept in superb condition is shown by 

 the fact that at every engagement he did as much as was ex- 

 pected of him. 



Mr. White furnishes, for this volume, the following brief 

 story of the preparation of the trotter for his record-breaking 

 campaign: 



"I commenced Lee Axworthy's training the first day of 

 January, 1916, at Thomasville, Ga., where we wintered the 

 horses of the Pastime Stable as was the custom. I gave him 

 jog work from four to six miles every day but never more 

 than six miles. 



"On the first day of March I began to give him slow 



