It’s the first weekend of October 1971, you’re an American in Paris for the 50th running of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Sunday—the favorite for which is the Virginia-bred colt Mill Reef (Never Bend); where are you spending your time, aside from the Longchamp course? The legendary bar at the Ritz Paris hotel, of course—designated as a “horsey bar” by the New York Times.

Let’s begin with a little 1971 Arc Week joke: One night in the Ritz Paris bar, owner/breeder Ogden Mills (Dinny) Phipps, who would later serve as chairman of The Jockey Club for more than 30 years, spotted a dozen American racing industry representatives, including the Markeys of Calumet Farm, Northern Dancer trainer Horatio Luro, Laurel Race Course President John Shapiro, creator of the Washington D.C. International—the pioneering turf race that drew international runners to the U.S.—and Whitney Tower, future president and chairman of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, who was covering the race as turf editor for Sports Illustrated.

“It is a relatively small bar; no Frenchman could get in,” BloodHorse Editor Kent Hollingsworth wrote of the scene, and quoting the quipping Phipps, “‘This place looks like Paris, Kentucky.’”

Yet long before the 1971 Arc, the originator of this “horsey bar” was Ernest Hemingway, himself a skilled handicapper, and this Ritz Paris haunt of his served as the regular meeting place for him and his friends to finalize their picks for the race day at one of the city’s tracks. In his posthumously published book “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway referred to horse racing as “The falsest, most beautiful, most exciting, vicious, and demanding [friend] because she could be profitable.”

Hemingway wrote about the sport—both flat and steeplechase racing—as early as his first year living in Paris in 1922. For his short story “My Old Man,” told from the perspective of a son of a jockey, he used details from that summer’s Prix du Président de la République Stakes (now the Grand Prix du Saint-Cloud), run at the Saint-Cloud race course in which the Irish-bred Kircubbin (Captivation) beat the French-bred, two-time Arc champion Ksar (Bruleur)—though in his story the race was fixed, the horse “Kzar” held back by his jockey to allow Kircubbin to win. [A film based on the story starring John Garfield was released in 1950 called “Under My Skin,” which Hemingway thought was “pretty damned good.”] In 1923, he published in the Toronto Star Weekly the poem “The Sport of Kings” that chronicled the highs and lows of betting on horses: “The feeling of excitement among the friends in the office. The trip outside to buy a sporting extra. The search for the results. The sad return upstairs. The hope that the paper may have made a mistake.”

In the book “Papa Hemingway”—titled using the writer’s nickname—close friend and handicapping partner A.E. Hotchner recounted Hemingway’s stories of his inside access to French tracks, including the training grounds at Maisons-Lafitte and Chantilly. “‘They let me clock the workouts—almost no one but owners were allowed to operate a stopwatch—and it gave me a big jump on my bets,” Hemingway had told him. “That’s how I came to know about Épinard.’”

An expat trainer friend advised Hemingway to put his money on the “horse of the century” Épinard (Badajoz) for his juvenile start in the 1922 Prix Yacowlef at Deauville, for “Nothing like him has been seen in France since the days of Gladiateur and La Grande Ecurie.” Pierre Werthheimer’s Épinard, who later won the Grand Critérium (Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère), Prix de la Forêt and Prix d’Ispahan, went off at odds of 59-10 in his debut, and Hemingway lived off of those winnings for six-to-eight months!

Le Petite Bar at the Ritz Paris was the primary source for racing tips, provided by either its bartender Bernard Azimont (known as Bertin, whose handicapping was “more occult than scientific,” according to Hotchner), or Georges Scheuer, the manager in the hotel’s main bar who knew many of the trainers. For the Paris fall steeplechase meet at Auteuil in 1949, Hemingway and Hotcher pooled their betting funds together to form the “Hemhotch Syndicate” and fulfilled the former’s dream of attending every day of the race meet. “‘You get a wonderful rhythm,’” Hemingway had said to Hotchner, “‘like playing ball every day, and you get to know the track so they can’t fool you.”

Their biggest wager was near the end of the race meet, when Georges, “a very cautious track scholar” according to Hotchner, touted a 27-1 shot named Bataclan II—it was such a hot tip that Georges phoned upstairs to the Hemingways’ hotel room in the early morning, the writer’s wife Mary recalled in her memoir, “How It Was.” [In a New York Times interview years later, Georges revealed that in addition to being “well-supplied with inside information, he had an instinctive ability to read the horse sheets and ‘feel’ what it said down there on print and sometimes that way, he ‘just knew’ that a horse could not win and lots of these horses were the favorites.”] Hotchner described the scene down at the bar later that morning with Georges and Papa—“Bloody Marys to one side, the table top was a morass of charts, forms, scribble and whatnot,”—Hemingway determining they should wager the entirety of the Syndicate’s treasury on the horse while also pooling the funds of Mary, friends, every Ritz Paris waiter, plus Georges and Bertin, as well as the concierge and the men’s-room attendant. “The ‘thorough briefing’ was one of Ernest’s most salient characteristics, and it applied to everything he did.…Now he was in pursuit of Bataclan II.”

It wasn’t just years of handicapping experience and insider tips that Hemingway relied on for his race bets, however; he had other secrets for success—sometimes, it was smelling the horses in the paddock. “‘The truth is, where horses are concerned the nose will triumph over science and reason every time,’” he told Hotchner. The secret of the horses’ scent was not further elaborated upon, but Lillian Ross’ 1950 Hemingway profile for The New Yorker described how he didn’t smoke, for “Smoking ruins his sense of smell, a sense he finds completely indispensable for hunting….Then he enumerated elk, deer, possum, and coon as some of the things he can truly smell.” Plus horses—when hunting for race winners.

On the day of Bataclan’s race the essential ingredient was not Hemingway’s sense of smell, but possessing a lucky piece—and his was missing. These pieces ranged from small stones to champagne corks, “anything, so long as it’s pocket size,” he advised his Syndicate partner, enlisting him to find a new one. The best lucky pieces are likely those found without even looking for them, Hotchner later giving his friend a horse chestnut, stating, “‘It fell on my head, where the Champs Élysées comes into the Concorde.” Hemingway approved the piece and put it in his pocket for safe keeping as they headed to Auteuil, saying “‘Never lose your faith in mysticism, boy.’”

Bataclan II was victorious, though Hemingway’s wife Mary attributed it to bad luck for the two horses who fell on the hedges, their outdistanced pick “not the fabulous athlete Georges had predicted,” yet he still managed to capture the win. Paying out a whopping 232 francs to 10, Mary wrote, “For years Bataclan remained a famous name in the rue Cambon bars.”

Indeed, we return to where we started: the rue Cambon side of the Ritz Paris, referring to the street entrance for the hotel where Hemingway’s favorite “horsey” bar is found. “When I dream of afterlife in heaven,” Hotchner quoted his friend, “the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz. It’s a fine summer night. I knock back a couple of martinis in the bar—rue Cambon side.” At the time of the 1971 Arc and the gathering of Americans in the bar, Hemingway had been deceased for 10 years, but by the end of the decade Le Petite Bar was renamed Bar Hemingway in memoriam. Despite the closure of the space in the 1980s and periods of hotel renovation, the steadfast Bar Hemingway has served the Ritz Paris public for the better part of the past three decades since 1994. The bar’s delightful and frequently updated menu, “The Hemingway Star,” is packed with photos and stories of the writer alongside its listing of classic and bespoke cocktails, horsey ones too—from the cognac “A Horse’s Neck” to the bourbon and Grand Marnier “Grand Derby.” This, all under the watchful eye of the omnipresent Papa, who gazes out from the framed photographs and the magazine covers of Life, Look and Match that hang on the bar’s wood-paneled walls.

II.
“As is so often the case in racing, however, no one could have guessed that the small bay colt who arrived in the draft of yearlings from America in the autumn of 1969 would turn out to be the one,” wrote Mill Reef’s trainer Ian Balding in his memoir, “Making the Running: A Racing Life.” Bred in Virginia at Paul Mellon’s Rokeby Farm, Arc favorite Mill Reef was trained in England by Balding as part of Mellon’s European contingent of runners. After winning his 1970 debut at Salisbury and the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot, the colt lost his next race in France, finishing second by a short head to My Swallow in the Prix Robert Papin—this juvenile loss Balding attributed to an unfavorable draw and a bad journey from his Kingsclere stable. Mill Reef rebounded to win seven of his next eight races including the 1971 runnings of the Epsom Derby, Eclipse Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and was predicted as the horse to end the “Arc Jinx” of 23 years without a winner trained in England since the 1948 triumph of the Aga Khan’s Migoli (Bois Roussel).

“Mill Reef, the tiny battler who wins his races like an express train passing a funeral,” as he was described by Ireland’s Saturday Night sports paper, was carrying the hopes of millions of sportsmen from the British Isles as the favorite for the 1971 Arc—this diminutive colt standing just three inches over 15 hands. “But it won’t be easy, for the Arc is establishing a record as a favorite’s graveyard.”

Who was Mill Reef’s biggest threat? Second favorite for the Arc was another American-bred 3-year-old, this time a filly, acquired for $14,400 at the 1969 Saratoga yearling sale by French trainer Alec Head. Pistol Packer, the daughter of Hall-of-Famer Gun Bow, was bred in Pennsylvania by Esther du Pont Thouron of the du Ponts—a family steeped in the sport, her cousin, William du Pont, Jr., having designed tracks including Delaware Park and Maryland’s Fair Hill steeplechase course. Victorious in her last five outings with two Group 1 wins in the Prix de Diane and the Prix Vermeille, both run at the Arc track and distance, Pistol Packer raced in the silks of Alec’s wife Ghislaine with son Freddy as her regular rider.

According to French trainers, “Pistol Packer might be the best filly seen in France in the last 30 years,” Hollingsworth reported for BloodHorse. Following her win in the Prix Vermeille, the French paper Le Monde wrote, “There’s an ease about this filly that is both disconcerting and dazzling,” and with small bursts of speed “the filly leaves her opponents in her wake.”

But she had yet to race against male horses, and no filly had won the Arc since La Sorellina in 1953. “Pistol Packer’s form is not in doubt either,” Le Monde stated before the Arc. “But isn’t she overdoing it? This will be her third race in less than a month. Whatever our admiration for the filly, this repetition of effort arouses a certain reserve.”

Winning the Arc requires both stamina and strategy to overcome the challenges of the demanding track. “The Arc, run over Longchamp’s outside course with its long hill immediately after the start, a sweeping, steep downhill turn to the right and then a straight run home of three-eighths of a mile, has been won—and lost—by varying tactics,” wrote Whitney Tower for Sports Illustrated. “The best way to finish first is to stay close to the leaders and save ground on the rails,” which were the tactics of jockey Geoff Lewis with Mill Reef.

Lewis told the Daily Mirror that George Bridgland, the veteran Chantilly trainer whose horse Prince Royal (Ribot) won the 1964 Arc, offered him some tips for his ride. “‘George told me that whatever happened I must not be farther back than sixth at any stage, and I followed his advice,’” and from the number 7 draw position of 18 runners, the jockey settled Mill Reef into sixth place on the rail until the straight.

“As the pack turned into the three-furlong stretch, Hallez, piloted by Lester Piggott, had the advantage of Ossian and Ramsin fell back,” reported the New York Times, Ossian (Charlottesville) serving as the pacemaker for stablemate Ramsin (Le Haar), a stayer installed as third choice who had won the Prix de Barbeville, Prix du Cadran and the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud that year. “Mill Reef was hidden from view because of his small size. Then at the quarter-pole position well into the stretch Mill Reef shot through along the rail and in a few strides was clear.”

Lewis described the moment of taking Mill Reef off the rail in the Sunday Mirror: “‘When we saw daylight we only needed one tap….Then we were clear. I saw something coming on the outside and knew it must be Pistol Packer. Freddie [sic] Head had brought the filly a long way ‘round but he had to cover some ground from the outside draw.’”

Two furlongs from home, Mill Reef was leading by two lengths. “Although Pistol Packer might have been a threat even then, Mellon’s colt just kept grinding out the yardage,” wrote Tower.

“As Mill Reef drove relentlessly toward the finish of the 1½ miles in record time of 2:28.3, bettering Levmoss’ 1969 Arc time by seven-tenths of a second, a wave of applause rolled down the Longchamp stand,” reported BloodHorse, an estimated 65,000 spectators in attendance. “Records fell as rapidly as the autumn leaves in the surrounding Bois de Boulogne,” wrote Newcastle’s Journal, as the first American-bred and American-owned horse captured the Arc, just narrowly lowering the course record and breaking the jinx of more than 20 years without a winner trained in England.

Finishing three lengths behind in second was Pistol Packer, 1½ lengths ahead of Cambrizzia (Cambremont), the filly’s regular rival who placed second behind her in the Prix de Diane, Prix de la Nonette and the Prix Vermeille. The New York Times applauded Pistol Packer’s second-place run, calling it along with Mill Reef’s victory “a powerful tribute to the excellence of American horse breeding.”

“‘Pistol Packer was beaten by a wonder horse,’ [Alec] Head said of his Pennsylvania-born filly’s gallant effort,” the Associated Press reported. “‘I can’t feel too bad about it.’” Praising the valiant filly, Le Monde wrote, “Beaten, Pistol Packer aroused as much enthusiasm as her winner. The draw had assigned her one of the worst [draw] numbers: 18….It’s great that she then found the resources to become Mill Reef’s number one opponent.”

Mill Reef’s owner was overheard stating a similar sentiment as Head about his champion following the finish, for Mellon “could only gasp ‘Wonderful’ before being taken to be presented to President Georges Pompidou,” reported the Belfast News Letter. That year’s Arc was a landmark event as the first time for the French president and his wife to attend the Longchamp races.

“Is it the luck of the neophyte? On his first visit to Longchamp, Mr. Pompidou witnessed one of the most beautiful races on Sunday,” wrote Le Monde. President Pompidou agreed, for he told Balding and Mellon during the trophy presentation, “‘Congratulations! You won too easily! It was a beautiful race and the best horse won,’” reported the New York Times. The 1971 Arc trophies, designed by French silversmith Puiforcat, are a pair of silver-gilt Trophy Wine Coolers in the French Régence style of the early 18^th century—which, as gifts of the Estate of Paul Mellon, can be viewed at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

The mighty Mill Reef won the Arc on raw talent alone, but a little luck couldn’t have hurt his chances. On the eve of the race, Mellon—who in addition to having an Arc runner, was also representing The Jockey Club—attended the annual black-tie dinner at Maxim’s, hosted by Marcel Boussac, the French breeder and head of France’s flat racing parent organization, La Société d’Encouragement pour l’Amélioration des Races de Chevaux.

“The Virginia sportsman and art collector, Paul Mellon, spoke graciously of the upcoming event,” Tower wrote, Mellon referring to the next’s day race in his speech. “He pleased his audience to no end by calling the Arc the turf’s greatest race.” This comment must have brought Mellon some good karma, for as noted by Le Monde, the Arc was viewed at the time as the European Thoroughbred championship, not the world championship; “The Americans deny it this title in favor of their ‘Washington D.C.’” race—the before-mentioned International turf contest held at Laurel Park.

Good karma or not, Mill Reef’s three-length Arc win the following day earned the Paris-Turf headline, “Comme Sea Bird II—mais plus vite,”—“Like Sea Bird II—but faster”—which British racing journalist and commentator John Oaksey stated as being significant in his book, “The Story of Mill Reef.” While he had the benefit of a faster track, Mill Reef had beaten Sea Bird’s time, he wrote; “No one of course can claim that he was a better horse but it is eloquent proof of the impression left by his victory that French racing’s own trade paper should make such a comparison.”

III.
“Counting What’s Left,” the Sports Illustrated photo caption reads, the subject of the photo being Ernest Hemingway, who told the magazine that he “’lost on the big race like everyone else,’” as an 18-1 shot triumphed over 24 other runners in the end. It was the 38th running of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1959, a race that finished in a dead heat, though Prince Aly Khan’s English-bred entry Saint Crespin (Aureole), trained by Alec Head, prevailed as the winner following an inquiry. Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated captured Hemingway, counting his remaining francs in the grandstand.

We know Hemingway liked long shots, but the 3-year-old colt Saint Crespin, fourth in the Epsom Derby yet coming off a win in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown, must not have been in the mix for his bets that day. Along with Georges, Papa had been handicapping Longchamp that week, stating “we broke a little better than even yesterday,” in a letter written to Hotchner from his Ritz Paris hotel room on the day before the Arc. “Tomorrow we have the arc de triomphe which is the last classic flat race of the season + which is strictly something to stay away from except as a spectacle. I worked on it last night + since five o’clock this morning on the form + there is one outsider who figures. Will let you know how it comes out.”

There wasn’t mention of the race or his outsider pick in a follow-up letter—at least not in those included in Hotcher’s collection published in his book “Dear Papa, Dear Hotch”—but certainly there must have been discussion among the friends about the thrilling Arc day, which “drew a crowd of 80,000 to chestnut-shaded Longchamp, and the way to say it simply is to say that they got a horse race for their time, money and devotion,” wrote Sports Illustrated. Another photo of Hemingway at the track that day shows a bright October afternoon, this time the writer talking to Guido Orlando, a pen poised for jotting down notes on his “Courses Au Bois De Boulogne” racecard—either horse tips, or perhaps one of Orlando’s tales, for the “second-greatest publicist in the history of the world,” as the man called himself, was known for spinning yarns.

The fall of 1959 was the last trip to Paris for Hemingway prior to his death in the summer of 1961 at the age of 61. What would he have thought of Mill Reef’s Arc a decade later, had he been there—Hemingway, the American-bred from Oak Park, Illinois, with American-bred contenders taking the top two spots? Prior to the 1971 Arc, the New York Times tracked down Georges, then retired and living just yards from the Saint-Cloud race course, and interviewed him for the piece, “Hemingway’s Ex-Tipster Shuns Races,”—for according to the legendary barman, the horses no longer interested him and the racing tips were “‘always for the customers.’”

Georges praised Hemingway’s handicapping skills, recalling, “’He always came back from the track with his program well-marked. He made notations like ‘this horse should win next time’ or ‘this horse wasn’t trying today.’ He was very good.’” As far as that year’s Arc was concerned, “‘Oh, I suppose Mill Reef is a good horse,’” Georges told the Times. “‘I kind of like Pistol Packer, though. But I don’t really care much one way or another.’”

As the favorite, a win bet on Mill Reef wasn’t particularly alluring—the result was 1.70 francs on a one franc bet, or the equivalent of $3.40 on a $2 win bet—but in this hypothetical situation, had Hemingway and Georges put their heads together for that race, they might have aimed for Le Tiercé, France’s trifecta bet that was created in 1954 (the trifecta wasn’t introduced in the U.S. until 1971). Georges already liked Pistol Packer as an alternate (the filly paid $3.80 to place), and Cambrizzia, who returned $8.60, was a compelling choice for third; she finished second three times behind the other filly, and lost by hardly a nostril in the Prix de Diane, the New York Times reporting that the photo showed less than an inch between them. And had Hemingway been there for this running of the Arc, he would have observed something interesting about the favorite while assessing the horses in the pre-parade ring prior to the race.

Mill Reef had two attendants, one on each side, after previously experiencing anxious moments in the paddock, Oaksey wrote in “A Story of Mill Reef,” and on Arc day these handlers did something clever to relax him. “There are horse-chestnut trees in the pre-parade ring at Longchamp, and, spotting some particularly juicy conkers on the ground Tom Reilly [farrier] asked John Hallum [groom] to stop a moment while he collected a few,” Oaksey wrote. “At the first time of asking Mill Reef did not take kindly to this interruption but then he saw what Tom was doing. ‘And from then on,’ John says, ‘everytime we reached a conker he stopped of his own accord. In the end when Tom had plenty it was a job to get him past them.’”

Those good old lucky chestnuts. In “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway wrote about them several times: buying roasted chestnuts to eat during cold weather; the “fine chestnut trees, some huge and spreading” on the Ile de la Cité; and the blossoming horse-chestnut trees in the spring as he walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg. And finally, “For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot in your right pocket,” the lucky piece that served Bataclan II making an appearance in his Paris sketches.

Hemingway told Hotchner during the 1949 Auteuil meet that he no longer trusted his sense of smell for picking horses, but for this imaginary 1971 Arc scenario, he just might have indulged it prior to making his trifecta bet on Mill Reef, Pistol Packer and Cambrizzia; perhaps for added luck he would have carried a fresh chestnut in his right pocket, a fallen conker found in the shade of the Longchamp trees.

“Never lose your faith in mysticism, boy,” he might say, after the bet was placed.

And following a big win, one must always return to the Ritz Paris for a celebration at the bar, rue Cambon side.

NOTES
If you’d like to watch the two Arc races from this piece, see the following video links: Saint Crespin’s 1959 Arc; and Mill Reef’s 1971 Arc.

As mentioned above, the two Arc trophies are currently on view at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York, through March 2025 as part of the exhibit, “The Passions of Paul Mellon: Horses, Art, and Philanthropy.”

In France, Mill Reef also won the 1972 running of the Prix Ganay at Longchamp by 10 lengths, the trophy for which—a Puiforcat silver-gilt oval Trophy Dish—is also part of the Mellon exhibit. All three pieces were gifted by Mellon’s estate to the museum where he had served as a trustee, and at the close of the exhibit the trophies will continue to be on view as part of the permanent collection in the Sculpture Gallery. Photos of the Mill Reef painting by Richard Stone Reeves and the trophy case were taken by Turf History Times at the Mellon exhibit.