JC / Railbird

Racing History

HOTY and the BC

With Zenyatta, Quality Road, and Blame expected in the Classic, it’s no secret that this year’s Breeders’ Cup will decide Horse of the Year. You could say the event is reverting to form. In the 26 runnings since its inception in 1984, only eight horses have been named HOTY without starting in a Breeders’ Cup race:

Three distaffers have won HOTY since 1984, but only Rachel Alexandra did so without a Breeders’ Cup race. She did have a Woodward Stakes start, though, as did three of the other seven HOTYs to win without the BC (Mineshaft ran in the Jockey Club Gold Cup after winning the Woodward). The Woodward Stakes turns out to be a key race in HOTY campaigns, second only to the Breeders’ Cup Classic: 12 of the 26 BC-era winners started in the Woodward en route to honors, 11 of the 20 main track male winners three and up.

Posted in Racing on October 2, 2010 / Tagged Breeders' Cup, Champions, Eclipse Awards, Horse of the Year, Racing History, Woodward Stakes

Taking Liberties

Steve Haskin catalogs the various solecisms of “Secretariat,” including:

Penny, Lucien, and groom Eddie Sweat being in the stall for Secretariat’s birth was way too Hollywood and over the top, and was too far removed from reality for even a Disney movie; as was the jockeys for Secretariat’s first race at (“Aqueduct”) mounting and dismounting their horses in the backstretch (filmed at Evangeline Downs), directly outside the barn. That’s something you’d see in a low budget 1930’s movie. Also, the shot of Penny, Lucien, and Sweat dancing and hip-bumping and Penny washing down Secretariat with no one holding the horse were a bit too much, as was Eddie Sweat standing on the track on the eve of the big race, shouting to the heavens about what the world was about to see.

On the positive side: The “kinetic” racing scenes draw Haskin’s raves.

Posted in Media on September 20, 2010 / Tagged Artistic License, Disney, Film Review, Movies, Racing History, Secretariat

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.

Posted in Racing on August 19, 2010 / Tagged Charles E. Van Loan, Charts, Dirt, Old Man Curry, Racing History, Santa Anita, Synthetic Surfaces

Miss Mary, Licensed Trainer

Noted in today’s TDN:

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.

Posted in Racing on July 8, 2010 / Tagged Derby History, Mary Hirsch, Racing History, Trainers, Women in Racing