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ROBERTA HUNTRESS

Music of the track

In 1950 Roberta Huntress, a newly capped graduate of State University Teachers College, Potsdam, N.Y., was voted the "music teacher most likely to succeed." Bobbie succeeded, all right, but not by playing the piano. Today, as a hard-hatted professional driver of pacers and trotters, she is one of the few women to win acceptance in the masculine world of harness racing.

In making the transition, Bobbie compiled some impressive credits. At New Hampshire's Rockingham Park, for example, she set a local season track record last spring by earning $11,970 in four races. And in Toronto's Old Woodbine Stakes last summer she set a Province of Ontario trotting record by guiding Wee Irish—the horse shown above—around the mile track in 2:02.

When she's not racing, Bobbie trains 17 horses, breaks an occasional colt and does her own shoeing. She even finds time to keep up with her teaching. "A day or two in the classroom is all right," she says. "But after that I feel cooped up."

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