The Youngest Hambletonian Driver

In 1959, Illinois native Walter Paisley, a recent high-school graduate, was going to the gate with an obscurely-bred horse in harness racing's most prestigious trotting event, the Hambletonian. The then 18-year-old Paisley, nicknamed "Butch" by his peers, sent Algiers Eblis postward from slot ten over DuQuoin's famed oval.

"This horse belonged to my father," Paisley remembered. "At the time Harry Burright, who did most of the driving of our horses, was set down. This horse didn't belong in the Hambletonian, but my dad had this dream of having a horse in the Hambo and had his mind set that I was going to drive the horse."

The entry fee for the 1959 Hambletonian was just $2,000.

"That was the kind of money that it took to buy a car back then," Paisley mused. "It was a lot of money to us. I remember that in the Chicago newspapers, they had picked the horse dead last, at odds of 99-1, which was before there were ever any kind of odds or wagering on the Hambletonian."

Algiers Eblis was a 1956 foal from the Volomite sire Algiers, out of the mare Astra Eblis, whose lineage traced back to Scotland.

"My father bought Algiers Eblis at the old stockyards in downtown Chicago," Paisley said. "At the time, that's where they used to have the yearling sales. He was a big, good-looking colt, and was impressive as a youngster."

As a three-year-old the rangy stud colt had already taken a mark of 2;08.1 over a five-eight's mile track and would, later in the year, lower that time to 2:06.3 over a mile track for the Paisley family.

Prior to driving in the Hambletonian, Paisley had donned his green and white silks on the Illinois county fair circuit, and in a lone start at Sportsman's Park, then a five-eight's mile race track.

"At the time, it was just when the drivers were starting to make the switch from the soft caps to the helmets," Paisley said. "It wasn't yet a mandatory rule, but my dad insisted that I wear a helmet. I didn't want to, becasue a lot of the "big" guys in harness racing back then weren't wearing them. But I wore it because I knew my father wasn't going to let me drive otherwise."

Paisley found himself rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in the sport at the time: Frank Ervin, Ralph Baldwin, Del Miller, and a couple of guys from New York named Billy Haughton and Stanley Dancer.

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