Railbird 2004–2019

Racing History

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.

Posted in Racing on April 27, 2009 / Tagged Kentucky Derby, Morvich, Racing History, Readings

Genuine Risk, 1977-2008

Only two days after Proud Spell very likely clinched this year’s filly championship comes the news that Genuine Risk, the champion filly of 1980, died in her Virginia paddock this morning. Genuine Risk won 10 of her 15 career starts, including the Demoiselle and Ruffian Handicap, and never finished worse than third (PDF), but what earned the chestnut mare with the distinctive blaze her fame was being the second filly to win the Kentucky Derby:

She remains the only filly to have finished in the money in every Triple Crown race, placing four lengths behind Codex in the Preakness after the colt drifted into her path in the stretch and carried her wide (a controversial finish some horseplayers are surely still nursing grudges over) and losing by a nose to 53-1 Temperence Hill in the Belmont. As usual, the Sports Illustrated Vault is a trove of good stories, including William Nack’s recounting of the Firestones’ delirious rush to the Derby winner’s circle and the “talk show” that followed the stewards’ decision to let stand the Preakness order of finish. William Leggett was on scene for the Belmont, an upset so shocking it hushed the crowd.
Genuine Risk was retired from racing in 1981 with an injury; she was not a successful broodmare (PDF), although she was, as Maryjean Wall recalls, “a very loving mom.” Of her two living foals, Genuine Reward made it into training with Bill Mott, but both were unraced, and she was pensioned in 2000, kept in comfortable retirement by her doting owners.

Posted in Racing on August 18, 2008 / Tagged Genuine Risk, Kentucky Derby, Racing History

Seabiscuit’s Fishy Finish

Vic Ziegel revisits Seabiscuit’s 1940 Santa Anita Handicap win:

One of sports’ greatest what-ifs took place 65 years ago today in the $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap, which was then racing’s richest prize. What if — and why didn’t — the jockey on Kayak II use his whip when he seemed ready to pass the leader near the finish line?

Kayak finished second and, the chart notes tell us, ‘might have been closer to the winner had he been vigorously ridden in the last sixteenth.’ Which is racing’s dignified way of saying, ‘You can smell it from here.’

Kayak’s owner didn’t complain, was thrilled in fact. He happened to own the winner as well. A 7-year-old, racing for the last time, named Seabiscuit.

Hm … Ziegel writes that owner Charles Howard was rooting for the win because it “would make Seabiscuit the game’s leading money-winner, and enhance his reputation when he went to stud.”

Posted in Racing on March 2, 2005 / Tagged Racing History, Seabiscuit