Revisiting the Past
Colin’s Ghost asks, who really invented race charts?
Claire Novak, doing research in the National Museum of Racing, recently came across the work of Charles E. Van Loan, a popular sports writer of the early 20th century (and the man responsible for bringing Damon Runyon to the New York American). She shared a link to one of his long out-of-print books, “Old Man Curry: Race Track Stories,” a collection originally published in 1917, available through Project Gutenberg. It’s a quick summer read, packed with rich scenes from the backstretch and colorful characters — not to mention an introduction with laments that sound awfully familiar — and I enjoyed it, despite aspects disturbing to a reader of the 21st century. Be advised: some dialogue and descriptions are very much of the era.
Santa Anita is returning to dirt, announced Frank Stronach.
Miss Mary, Licensed Trainer
July 7, 1934 … Mary Hirsch became the first female to be licensed as a Thoroughbred trainer, in Illinois. Hirsch subsequently was licensed in Michigan that year and two years later, on April 9, she was licensed by The Jockey Club to train in New York.
Hirsch, known as “Miss Mary” and described as a “frail-looking, sad-eyed” young woman with modest hopes by Time Magazine in April 1935, was the daughter of Hall of Fame trainer Max Hirsch, who conditioned Sarazen, 1924-25 Horse of the Year, and Assault, the 1946 Triple Crown winner. He’s also known for losing Stymie, eventual champion and winner of almost $1 million in earnings, as a juvenile in a $1500 claiming race.
Nothing so dramatic, won or lost, would mark Miss Mary’s career, but she did have the distinction of being the first female trainer to saddle a horse in the Kentucky Derby. No Sir, a well-bred stakes-winning gelding owned by Hirsch, finished 13th in the 1937 run for the roses, which was won that year by War Admiral. She also became the first female trainer to win the Travers, with a horse named Thanksgiving, in 1938, a year in which she won 18 races and $26,210, “a record not equaled by scores of men trainers,” wrote Charles B. Parmer in “For Gold and Glory,” a history of American thoroughbred racing published in 1939. The author not only admired Hirsch as a trainer, but for what a good sport she could be, as exemplified by this story:
A standing alibi on the race track, when a good horse loses, is for the owner to announce: the jockey didn’t give my horse a good ride. Mary Hirsch endeared herself to the jockey colony one day, when she climbed the stairs into the press box. One of her horses had lost a race the day before: the newspapers said the jockey had given him a poor ride. Mary said: “You chaps are all wrong. The boy rode to my orders — the horse just couldn’t make it.”
In 1936, Hirsch helped her father win his first Kentucky Derby by sending 18-year-old Ira Hanford, her apprentice jockey, to ride Bold Venture. The colt paid $43 to upset; Hanford was suspended 15 days for rough riding.
Plucky Mrs. Bagwill
In advance of a possible piece on the Lady Legends race, in which eight retired female jockeys will ride in the fourth race at Pimlico on Friday to benefit the Komen Foundation, I’ve been doing a bit of research on women jockeys in American racing. With the library packed up in preparation for a move, making it difficult to get to “The Lady Is a Jock” and other sources, I’m relying on what I can find through Google, the New York Times, and the DRF Archive at Keeneland, which yielded an interesting tidbit about an early “jockette.”
In January, I came across Miss Milfred, a young woman looking for work as a jockey in 1892 Chicago. Nothing more has turned up on Frances Milfred, but in 1898, there appears a Mrs. Bagwill. Notes the DRF of October 4:
Probably the only female jockey in the world is riding in running races on the Pacific Coast circuit. She is a Mrs. Bagwill, twenty-four years old, weight 101 pounds, and resides at Carson City, Nev. At the recent Nevada State Fair she won two of her five mounts. Mrs. Bagwill wears the regulation jockey costumes in races and rides astride.
The October 9, 1898 Kansas City Journal fills in a few more details, although, not her first name:
Six horses, straining every nerve and splendidly ridden by some of the best jockeys of this country, raced swiftly around the track at Reno, Nev., at the last meeting, and came down the stretch in magnificent style. Of the three horses first under the wire the last was ridden by a woman who, sitting astride, plied whip and spur in masterly style, and clearly outrode her competitors.
The woman was Mrs. Bagwill, a native of Nevada, who is probably the only female jockey in the world.
Her experience as a jockey has not been very extensive, but of the five races in which she has ridden twice has her horse come in a winner, and never has she ridden “outside” the money.
Mrs. Bagwill’s first attempt was at Carson City, when she rode third to Coates, sometimes known as “Pizen,” and Feathergill.
Mrs. Bagwill is 24 years of age and has been married for five years. She is of medium stature, petite in figure, but well proportioned and weighs 101 pounds. She is very modest and unassuming. When on the street, she dresses in plain black and from her appearance none would imagine that she ever assumed the part of a jockey.
She had an ambition to assist her husband, and being a good rider, decided that she could be more successful as a jockey than at anything else. In the saddle when ready for a race she wears bifurcated skirts, but fitting neatly.
And with that, Mrs. Bagwill, like Miss Milfred, recedes from history.
Returning Champions
Noting that Kelso went to post as the favorite in four out of five of his returns as reigning Horse of the Year, commenter o_crunk remarked:
It makes me wonder if returning champions who go off favored in their return beat the average win percentage of favorites?
It turns out that, yes, favored returning champions do beat the average.
Champions from 1971-2008 (excluding steeplechase horses) made 210 first starts back the year after being honored, going to post favored in 177 of those races (84%) and winning 105 times (59%), a rate well above the standard 33.3% (or the 2009 average of 36.6%) As usual, the public is astute: All returning champions averaged odds of .97-1, but favored returning champions averaged odds of .68-1. Betting $2 to win on each favored champion would have returned $321.10 $285 to $354 wagered.
(View the spreadsheet/download the spreadsheet.)
A few observations based on quick analysis:
Thirty-nine champions returned in ALW/AOC company, winning 26 (66%) of those races. No champion not favored — with the exception of 2008 juvenile champion Midshipman, returning in a 2009 Belmont AOC — won at this level.
Fifty-two champions returned in ungraded stakes, winning 30 (57%) at average odds of .84-1. Only two, out of five, not favored won, but betting $2 to win on those five would have returned $13.20 to $10 wagered.
Most champions returned in graded stakes, winning 49 (41%) of 119 starts. Of the 98 that were favored, 44 won (45%) at average odds of .80-1.
Including Rachel Alexandra, returning Horses of the Year since 1971 (see chart below) made 20 starts. Favored in 19 races, they won 15 (79%) at average odds of .40-1. Betting only favored HOTYs would have returned $41.40* for $38.
*Only with a little luck would a player be on the plus side. John Henry, the highest-priced favored HOTY, finished second in the 1982 Santa Anita Handicap and was bumped to first by the disqualification of Perrault. If the results had stood, favored come-back HOTYs would have won 14 (74%) out of 19 starts and returned $36.80 for $38.
The Returns of Kelso
Gary West invokes (as I did on Twitter) the record of the great gelding Kelso, the only five-time Horse of the Year, in appraising Rachel Alexandra’s loss in the New Orleans Ladies Stakes last Saturday:
Very few horses could have performed so well returning from a six-month layoff. The effort, in fact, could have been an ideal start, a solid foundation, for an outstanding season. Kelso was named Horse of the Year five consecutive years, 1960-1964, and four times he began the following year’s campaign with a loss.
And in every year but 1964, he followed that first loss with a win. Whether Rachel Alexandra will manage the same remains to be seen, but let’s look back at Kelso, a fine example of an elite horse who was — in keeping with the times — annually raced into form without much second-guessing of either his honors or connections.
The one year Kelso won his first start back as reigning Horse of the Year was 1961, when he made his 4-year-old debut in a seven-furlong allowance race at Aqueduct, carrying 124 pounds to runner-up Gyro’s 115. “Drew out with ease,” reads the chart note.
His 1962 return in the Metropolitan Handicap was a stiffer test, with 1961 Kentucky Derby winner Carry Back among the nine starters. Carry Back, making his ninth start of the year, won brilliantly, equaling the track record time. It was the “greatest race of his career,” wrote Joseph Nichols in the New York Times of the 4-year-old’s effort. Kelso, however, coming off a lengthy layoff in which he had been recuperating from injuries suffered while finishing second in the 1961 International, was termed no threat. Carrying 133 pounds to Carry Back’s 123, the gelding “showed no inclination to run, even with Willie Shoemaker to urge him.” Of the race, Shoemaker said, “No excuses at all. That 133 pounds on him and his idleness made the difference.” In his next start, Kelso won a Belmont allowance, then finished second in the Suburban. He didn’t win his first stakes race of the year until the Stymie Handicap in September, which he followed with a win ten days later in the Woodward and another win three weeks later in the Jockey Club Gold Cup.
In 1963, off a brief eight-week rest, Kelso returned in the seven-furlong Palm Beach Handicap at Hialeah, losing to the favored Ridan, who was the runner-up to Jaipur in the 1962 Travers and a horse believed best at shorter distances. The results were considered unremarkable all around, and Kelso soundly defeated Ridan by 2 3/4 lengths in his next start two weeks later, the nine-furlong Seminole Handicap at Hialeah.
On his return in 1964, Kelso lost again, this time in the Los Angeles Handicap at Hollywood, a race in which he lugged 130 pounds to the 124 carried by winner Cyrano. “Dull effort,” notes the chart. He came back in the Californian two weeks later, finishing sixth by eight lengths as the 1.40-1 favorite. This was the year that rumblings Kelso might be finished began, as he followed the Californian with a win in a $15,000 handicap at Aqueduct (toting 136 to the runner-up’s 114) and then seconds in the Suburban Handicap and Monmouth Handicap. In the Brooklyn Handicap, won by Gun Bow, he finished fifth by 14 lengths after stumbling badly as he came out of the starting gate. Disappointed, trainer Carl Hanford packed Kelso away for a few weeks on the farm, a respite that seemed to restore the 7-year-old gelding, who came back to win an allowance over the Aqueduct turf, and then — “in the most emotion-packed horse race since the opening of Aqueduct in 1959,” as Nichols wrote in the Times — defeated Gun Bow by three-quarters of a length in the Aqueduct Stakes, paying $6.40 to loyal backers. Second by a nose to Gun Bow in the Woodward, his next start, Kelso came back to win the Jockey Club Gold Cup by four lengths, setting two records — all-time money-earner and a new track time of 3:15 1/5 for two miles — in doing so.
From the Thoroughbred Record, November 7, 1964:
“You really think he won’t run here no more?” the fat man asked. “They said that about Carry Back and all them others, but they run again. Hell, it won’t seem like Saturday without Kelso, will it?”
Kelso was not supposed to run in 1965. The campaign he closed with an annihilating 4 1/2 length victory over Gun Bow in the 1964 International at Laurel was to be his last, but his late-season dominance had Hanford and owner Allaire duPont wavering in their plan to retire the gelding. And so Kelso, Horse of the Year for the fifth consecutive year, came back on June 29, finishing third in an allowance at Monmouth. He returned to win the Diamond State at Delaware, flashing a bit of his old form. Lightly raced that summer, the 8-year-old ended the year with an eight-length win in the Stymie on September 22. Horse of the Year was shared in 1965, going to the undefeated 2-year-old filly Moccasin and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Roman Brother.
The champion made only one more start, in a six-furlong allowance at Hialeah in March 1966 in which he finished fourth. Suffering a minor sesamoid fracture, Kelso was retired with more than $1.9 million in earnings and a career record of 63-39-12-2, his losses — and perhaps especially those incurred in his intense rivalry with Gun Bow — as much a part the story of his greatness as his many accomplishments.
From the archives: Readings: Alexander and Kelso at Aqueduct.
Reading Palmer
On the Second Pass, John Williams resurrects Joe Palmer for a new audience:
I don’t want to give the impression that an interest in the sport, or a knowledge of its history, is entirely unnecessary to an enjoyment of This Was Racing. But it’s easy enough to skim any confounding details and focus on the more universal sentiments. Like many great writers and conversationalists, Palmer mostly circled his ostensible subject, rarely landing on it. The most memorable stretches of the book aren’t about racing at all. They’re about recipes for jellied whiskey or the Australian hobby of “kangaroo chasing” or listening to a band torture “My Old Kentucky Home.” (”I could have played it better on a comb.”)
More than half a century removed from his work, it is good to be reminded of what a master turf writer Palmer was. Read the complete review (and then, if you haven’t, “This Was Racing”).
From the archives: An excerpt from “This Was Racing” about trainers Duval and Hal Price Headley, Menow, and the 1938 MassCap.
See also: One of Palmer’s most recognized pieces is “Common Folks,” a near-perfect report of the recently-retired Stymie’s appearance at Jamaica.
Miss Milfred’s Ambition
From the Saint Paul Daily Globe, August 10, 1892:
CHICAGO, ILL., Aug. 9. — Frances Milfred would like to be a jockey. She is from Missouri and knows how to handle a horse. Being fond of outdoor exercise and a lover of excitement, she is determined to do something besides play the typewriter or call “cash.” She is now visiting Chicago, and will not return to St. Joe unless she fails to secure a position with some owner of fast horses. It is her ambition to come down the stretch in a whipping finish and land her horse about two lengths ahead of Fox, Goodale, Overton, Penny and other slim-waisted young men who think they can ride.
Miss Milfred, after coming to Chicago a month ago, visited Washington Park and watched the flyers for several successive days. She lost $13.50 in cash ventures, but discovered a new sphere for women. The more she watched the races the more firmly she became convinced that she could learn to ride as well as any one else. Once she had been in the Kiralfy chorus and had made only $10 a week. When she heard that jockeys often made $100 for winning one race, that settled it.
Saturday evening the following “ad” appeared in one of the papers:
LADY aged twenty-five, from West, good rider, would like to learn to be a jockey. Address S. B. 84.
An encouraging letter addressed to S. B. 84 brought a reply that Miss Frances Milfred would be at home Monday at No. 17 Upton Street. There she was found, in the bottom flat, a brown-haired, slim young lady of pleasant features and a desire to explain her ambition.
“In the first place, my weight is all right,” said she. “With me it is a serious matter. I want to do something to make a living, and believe I would make a good jockey. Ever since I can remember I have been accustomed to handling horses. Four years ago I was counted the best rider in St. Joe, and once I won a race at a county fair. Do you see any reason why a young lady should not be a jockey? No. Neither do I. My folks would object, of course, but if I don’t succeed here I’m going East and try it.”
The original “jockette”?
Always More
From The Rail (NYT), 6/4/2009:
… thoroughbreds put out bigger efforts these days than their muscles, ligaments, suspension systems and bones can easily sustain. Their physical structure is tested to the utmost to maintain the speed they can now achieve with modern training methods.
From the Thoroughbred Record (HotC, p. 163), 6/3/1911:
Somebody once asked a famous Kentucky turfman what was the chief requisite in the makeup of a great racehorse, and the answer was “speed.”
“And what was after that?” was the next question.
“More speed,” was the reply.
Monday Notes
- Preakness winner Rachel Alexandra breezed six furlongs in 1:13.80 this morning at Churchill Downs, galloping out seven furlongs in 1:28. “She went beautiful, like she always does,” said trainer Steve Asmussen. “She’s in a nice rhythm and seems very happy right now.” No decision yet on where she might start next. Owner Jess Jackson has mentioned the June 27 Mother Goose at Belmont as a possibility, but the racetrack rumor much-repeated over the weekend, including from those who had seen her recently at Churchill, was that the filly is not training well and may be away from the races longer than her connections publicly anticipate. Of course, while it’s true that her work times have been less zippy since the Preakness (in her final breeze before that race, she went four furlongs in :48.40 versus the :50.20 she posted in the first work after; in her one five furlong breeze before the Oaks, she went the distance in :59.40 compared to the 1:01.60 of her work the first week of June), it should be noted that she has kept to her training schedule without apparent incident, working three Mondays straight for her new barn.
- Tweeted @EJXD2 on Sunday, in reference to Birdstone’s successful Triple Crown season as a young sire:
The last time [a] sire was represented by two different classic winners in his first crop was Count Fleet in 1951.
For the trivia-interested, there’s some additional historical similarity between the two sires and their winners in that, like Birdstone, Count Fleet’s first classic winner was a little regarded Kentucky Derby longshot, Count Turf, who beat another Count Fleet colt entered in the Derby, the favored Counterpoint. He went on to win the Peter Pan in record time and then the Belmont Stakes as the third favorite. According to the Belmont chart comments, “Counterpoint permitted … Count Turf to go to lead … regained the lead when the latter gave way.” Sounds a bit like what we saw on Saturday …
- There may be layoffs at Blood-Horse and Thoroughbred Times, and the newspaper industry in general may be imploding, but Daily Racing Form is doing fine, reports the New York Times.
- After the race: Visiting Summer Bird in his barn after the Belmont Stakes.
Prosy Things
Eric Crawford’s recent Courier-Journal column on all the great writing inspired by the Kentucky Derby sent me to the archives for a bit on writing a Derby sonnet that E.B. White included in a New Yorker humor piece:
What about the first horse I ever bet on? That was in Lexington, Kentucky, where I had gone to seek my fortune in an atmosphere favorable to the competitive spirit. (I had held three or four jobs around New York that winter, but they were prosy things at best and I felt I was losing my fine edge so I got out.) My first horse was a female named Auntie May. She was an odd-looking animal and an eleven-to-one shot, but there was this to be said for her — she came in first…. Kentucky was lovely that spring. I got twenty-two dollars from the contest and would have let it go at that if I had not chanced to fall in with some insatiable people who were on their way to Louisville to enter other contests. I went along with them. It seems I got hooked in Louisville. The Derby was a little too big for me, I guess. Easy come, easy go. But I didn’t quit. I was temporarily without money but I still had a sonnet or two up my sleeve. After the race I returned to my hotel … and wrote a fourteen-line tribute to Morvich, the winning horse, and later that evening sold it to a surprised but accommodating city editor. If you will look in the Louisville Herald for Sunday, May 14, 1922, you will find my sonnet and see how a young, inexperienced man can lose a horse race but still win enough money to get out of town. You needn’t thumb all through the paper … it’s right on the front page, in a two-column box.
White’s mention of Morvich reminds me … while it’s now a fashionable conceit that top 3-year-olds tweet, back in 1922 the Derby winner spoke in far more than 140 characters. Here’s Morvich, as channeled by Gerald Breitigam, in “An Autobiography of a Horse,” recalling his Derby experience:
At length, after long waiting, the Derby hour struck. It was late, nearing five o’clock. But the air was warm, the sun bright.
Ah, my friend, how to describe the feeling that animated me as little Al Johnson, my jockey, rode me to the barrier? Beautiful women filled the clubhouse boxes. The stands were densely packed, and ablaze with many colors, for these Kentucky women are not afraid to put on gaiety at a fete. And as we moved along, the track, it could be seen there were dense masses of men packing the outer rail to and beyond the quarter pole …
Ah, but when I appeared on the track, you should have heard the clamor. It seemed to me it would rend the heavens above, or shatter my ears. Sweeter music was never heard … ‘Morvich! Morvich!’ was the cry from all sections …
That parade to the post. How describe it? One must see such things to know what they are like. There were ten of us, thoroughbreds, the class of the turf, and let nobody tell you we did not know it. What beautiful things they were, those other horses. I could not help admiring them, even envying them a little, their grace and perfection of form. Yet it was I who was Morvich, the Unbeaten; I, the least well-favored of them all.
At the post I wanted to be off at once. This would not do. There had to be perfect alignment. Several times I darted forward. Finally, one of the starter’s assistants took my head, and held me thus until the barrier lifted. We were off!
The race was in the first hundred yards. For in that distance I was free and clear of the field, I had the rail, and there could be no jam or piling up the turns.
I covered that first furlong in a little under eleven, killed the field at the start, and took the heart and fight out of all those picture horses. First one and then another of the field would forge ahead and try to come up with me. But each who thus bid for fame held on but a little while, then fell away. Behind, I could hear the whip being plied as we came into the stretch, and I knew those beautiful horses were being given whip and spur in the endeavor to force them up to my race. But no whip ever touched me. And I would have run faster had it been necessary, but little Al never let my head out, even in the stretch, but always held me in …
And so I came home, just galloping, at the end. I had taken the lead, I was never headed, and I won by two lengths…. Whatever else I shall do, whatever laurels I shall receive in other races, cannot compare to this:
That I, the ugly duckling, the horse sold four times before an owner could be found who would put faith in me, ran undefeated through a season and won the Derby crown.
Kind of makes me want to read that sonnet.
About
Jessica Chapel is a writer and editor living in Cambridge, MA. Railbird v1 was a thoroughbred racing blog that ran 2004-2008; Railbird v2 is a broader collection of notes and links, but still (mostly) about the horses. More ›
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