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Kelso

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, finishing fourth 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, and for the first time since 1959, another horse would be named the year’s best. Or rather, two would be — 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.

Video of the 1964 International from the British Pathé archive:

From the archives: Readings: Alexander and Kelso at Aqueduct.

Posted in Racing on March 16, 2010 / Tagged First Starts, Great Horses, Horse of the Year, Kelso, Rachel Alexandra, Racing History

Readings: Alexander

Jockey Milo Valenzuela, retired in 1980 and inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2008, died Wednesday at the age of 74 following a long illness. Valenzuela rode many good horses, including Tim Tam and Round Table, but none were better than five-time Horse of the Year Kelso, with whom he won 22 of 35 races. The excerpt below from “Chocolate Sundaes and Old Shoes,” by David Alexander, recounts one gallant loss, the 1964 Suburban.

The Old Man was running at last like the champion he had always been and he was gaining, no longer inch by inch but foot by foot, and Yacza, who must have thought it was over at the quarter pole, suddenly discovered it had just begun and his whip went down on Iron Peg’s dark bay hide to sting him into the realization that he was no longer playing with the boys he had beaten by six and seven and thirteen lengths, but with the men now; specifically, with the greatest Old Man of them all.

The daffodil-yellow and smoke-gray banner of Bohemia was waving proudly again down the middle of the stretch. The dark face of Milo Valenzuela was grim at the instant it came into the focus of the binoculars I grasped with sweaty paws. And now the crowd broke its silence as they went to the eighth pole and the yards between Iron Peg and Kelso became feet, and as they passed the sixteenth pole the feet became inches.

‘Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!’ It was a keening, plaintive prayer. I think the ones who had backed Iron Peg into almost equal favoritism with the old champ had forgotten the tote tickets in their pockets, for they were yelling, ‘Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!’ too.

A veteran horseman who had no vested interest in Kelso was standing beside me. I knew him as a calm and unemotional fellow. Suddenly his hand began to pound the ledge in front of him compulsively and his voice rose to the shrill hysteria of a schoolgirl’s.

‘Old Man! Old Man!’ he shrieked. ‘Jesus, let the Old Man win!’

The Old Man didn’t win, not quite. But the usually heedless crowd, the crowd that sometimes hissed and sometimes booed when champions have lost, was faced with the rare thing called greatness, and for once the throng fully recognized what it saw.”

Video of the 1964 Suburban from the British Pathé archive:

Posted in Readings on September 3, 2009 / Tagged Kelso

Kelso at Aqueduct

Kelso, center, with Never Bend to the left and Crimson Satan to the right. Photo by George Silk (LIFE).

The caption on this undated photo, found browsing the LIFE archive now on Google (via), is simply “Kelso Horse,” but the picture is almost certainly of the 1963 Woodward Stakes, then held at Aqueduct, which Kelso won by 3 1/2 lengths as the 1-4 favorite. It was his third win in the Woodward (Kelso would finish second by a nose to Gun Bow in 1964) and his eighth victory of the year; in 1963, Kelso not only won the Woodward, but the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Whitney, Suburban, and Gulfstream Handicap, going 9-for-12 and earning a fourth straight Horse of the Year title.

A crowd of 50,234 was at the Big A to see the famous gelding face a small, but deep, field that included two juvenile champions (Never Bend, second, and Crimson Satan, third) and 1961 Kentucky Derby winner Carry Back (fourth), who was then fourth on the all-time earnings list. Kelso was second (the retired Round Table led with more than $1.7 million in purses) and this Woodward marked the first time two horses with earnings of more than $1 million met on track.

The race was run much as expected, with Never Bend the pacesetter and Kelso taking over at the 3/16 pole. “Speed to spare,” reads the chart. According to the NYT, “When Kelso was guided by Valenzuela into the lead … he was hailed by a steady flood of applause … the cheers were steady and spontaneous, unlike the shrieking and hysterical shouts that are offered up to a pure betting representative.” That must have been something to hear.

A few other striking photos from the archive: Seabiscuit, after winning the Santa Anita Handicap, Busher, “having ankles strapped,” and trainer Sunny Fitzsimmons, “sadly gazing at racehorse Nashua.”

Posted in History/Archives on November 20, 2008 / Tagged Kelso