kentucky derby history | Horse Racing Free Tips

Lost And Found Presented By LuibriSYN HA: Grindstone And Giacomo Share The Spotlight In Pacific Northwest

About 2,500 miles away from the site of their crowning achievements, Kentucky Derby winners Grindstone and Giacomo are still considered royalty at Oakhurst Equine Veterinary Services and Thoroughbred Farm in Newberg, Oregon.

Grindstone, pensioned since 2019, turns 29 in late January and Giacomo will be 20 in February.

“We are very, very fortunate and blessed to have two unique and special horses,” said Ben Root, operations manager for the facility founded in 1996 by his parents Dr. Jack and Margaret (“Cookie”) Root. “These stallions give us an opportunity to be ambassadors for Thoroughbred racing. We get calls a few times a month from people wanting to see them and we welcome them.”

The Derby stars have totally different personalities.

“Grindstone still thinks he is king of the world,” Root said. “He screams and yells and bangs on his stall door when a horse walks by. He loves attention. When he is led in or out of the barn, he announces his presence to the other stallions. He knows he's special, he knows he's cool.

“Giacomo is as tame and sweet as you could ever imagine. He might nip a little bit but you can get right up to him and even hold him to get a picture taken. We even have had older school children do that. Especially for non-horse people, Giacomo is an angel.”

Both have their quirks. Grindstone inexplicably removes his halter from his head almost daily. In perhaps a subtle show of dominance, Giacomo backs away if his halter is touched but willingly stands still for treats, pettings and photos. When turned loose in his paddock each morning, the son of Holy Bull performs his self-taught routine that includes pirouettes, bucks, rears and a few laps at a gallop.

Grindstone makes a face for a visit from top author Laura Hillenbrand in 2017

Prior to pandemic restrictions, Oakhurst hosted Kentucky Derby parties for several hundred friends, family and clients and a “Breakfast with the Stallions” event where Giacomo was in a nearby pen so guests could get up close and personal.

The occasional admirers who visit the stallions include owners of their offspring for racing and non-racing activities.

“They just want to see the dad,” Root said.

Track announcer and publicist Jason Beem, a longtime friend of the Root family, has made frequent stops to mingle with Giacomo. Another notable devotee is a man who came during his layover at the Portland International Airport.

From Bluegrass to Pacific Northwest

Grindstone and Giacomo launched their breeding careers in the heart of Kentucky's famed Bluegrass region prior to landing in their forever home. Grindstone, by Unbridled, was at owner-breeder W. T. Young's Overbrook Farm before being purchased by the Roots in 2009. Giacomo campaigned for breeders Jerry and Ann Moss until Frank Stronach became a partner for his four-year-old season. He initially was on the stallion roster at Stronach's Adena Springs before hopscotching to other states.

Grindstone was leased to Oakhurst when the Stronach conglomerate operated the now shuttered Portland Meadows with the goal of infusing enthusiasm into the area's small Thoroughbred market.

Giacomo eventually was sold to the Roots with the understanding he would remain under their care regardless of his results as a stallion.

Both have had a measure of success as sires to augment their celebrity status. A current headliner is Milords Oathkeeper, a Root family-bred son of Giacomo and the Grindstone mare Milady Rocks. The gelding brought honor to his connections in winning the Josephine County Juvenile Stakes at Grants Pass Downs in November. With two wins in five starts, he has earned a meager $14,831, but the figure is irrelevant to the family. The Root clan has long participated with more profitable racers in Washington, California, and Arizona, but Milords Oathkeeper has an intangible value. Ben Root summarizes the significance of the victory in three words.

Milords Oathkeeper is the pride and joy for the Root family, carrying the blood of Giacomo and Grindstone

“Oregon is home,” he said.

To punctuate the point, Root said they have declined attractive purchase offers in favor of racing him as a three-year-old in 2022.

“The emotional attachment kind of throws financial reality out the window,” Root said. “My father walks by his horses every day and says 'look what we have here.' We treat them like kings. They have beautiful stallion halters with brass name plates. Their paddock fences are black because my father designed the farm to look like Kentucky. We never take any of this for granted.”

For more information on Oakhurst Equine Veterinary Services and Thoroughbred Farm, visit https://oakhurstequine.com/

Liane Crossley is a Lexington-based freelance writer who has spent her entire career in Thoroughbred racing-related jobs in barns, press boxes and offices. She has worked for stables from Saratoga to Ak-Sar-Ben and from Canterbury Park to Oaklawn Park and about another dozen tracks in the eastern two thirds of America. A longtime contributor to Thoroughbred Times, her articles have appeared in Keeneland Magazine, Blood-Horse, Daily Racing Form, Thoroughbred Daily News, Breeders' Cup website, Horse Illustrated, European Bloodstock News, KyForward, Horse Illustrated, Young Rider and other publications. She is a seasonal member of Keeneland's media department.

The post Lost And Found Presented By LuibriSYN HA: Grindstone And Giacomo Share The Spotlight In Pacific Northwest appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

A Look Back At Mary Hirsch, Who Opened The Door For Female Trainers At Derby

When Vicki Oliver takes Hidden Stash to the saddling paddock on Saturday, she'll join a select group of trainers in Kentucky Derby history. Oliver will be the first female trainer to start a Derby runner in six years, and only the 17^th in the race's 147-year history. In interviews on the subject, Oliver has made it clear she's not ultra-keen on the female trainer angle – after all, horses don't spend much time fretting about the anatomy of their owners, trainers, or riders, and true horsemanship isn't ordained by chromosomes. In fact, the very first female trainer who blazed a trail for Oliver and others may have felt very much the same way.

The first female trainer to try for the roses came in 1937, well before it was possible for women to be jockeys and before it became routine to see them as exercise riders or grooms. Mary Hirsch was first woman granted a trainer's license in 1935 at the age of 22, after initially being rejected on the basis of her gender.

In just about every contemporary mention of Hirsch in the media, she was immediately introduced with what reporters apparently considered her primary credential to be a trainer – she was the daughter of legendary trainer Max Hirsch. It seems Max Hirsch had hoped his daughter would not fall in love with the family business. Mary Hirsch was sent to prestigious boarding schools and admitted once her father had discouraged her repeatedly from following him into the racetrack life. Despite her characterization by sportswriters though, Mary Hirsch didn't pick up training on the strength of her family's name alone. Her entire life had been a self-guided, rigorous preparation for nothing else. She had spent some of her early years living in a cottage on the grounds of Belmont Park, waking early with her father to help feed his horses and observe workouts. She rode jumpers and learned to gallop as soon as she was big enough, learned to shoe horses and read veterinary texts in her spare time.

When Max Hirsch realized he couldn't dissuade his daughter, he apparently decided to support her in her dream. She apprenticed in his stable for several years, and eventually began training her own string. Bernard Baruch, esteemed New York owner and client of Max, was the first to place horses with her. One account suggested that Baruch, disappointed with the finish of his promising sprinter Captain Argo under Max's conditioning, turned to Mary at the end of one race and asked if she could do better. She said she could, and would make Captain Argo a successful stakes runner. Baruch was one of her chief supporters, but Mary also bought her own runners.

Still, for several years, she had to run those horses in the name of her father or her brother, W.J. “Buddy” Hirsch. She was permitted to do all the preparation – managing horses' health and training schedules, riding them, instructing jockeys — all the regular duties of a trainer until the final minutes before a race when she was not permitted to handle her own horses or receive credit in the program. Her paper training was evidently no secret, as it was reported openly in newspapers.

At last, Mary grew embarrassed at having to give away the credit for her hard work. In 1934 Hirsch requested a license by The Jockey Club, which at the time was the regulatory body for racing in New York. Her application was tabled, (which in this case was formal speak for rejected without having to go through the unpleasantness of rejecting someone), so she sought licensure in Michigan and Illinois. For reasons that were never publicly detailed, she was successful there. She became the first woman to bring a string of horses to run at Hialeah, where she was also successful in being licensed. With a win there by Captain Argo, Hirsch returned to the board in New York, waving her license and asked them for a second time what they thought about a woman training racehorses. This time, the body agreed, which Hirsch said essentially afforded her an automatic in to wherever else she wanted to run.

At the start of 1937, she had built a reputation as an up and comer with a small operation. In 1935, Mary Hirsch had saddled winners of ten races for earnings of $10,365 (more than $200,000 today) and in 1936, she had 17 wins and $18,575 in earnings.

Her Derby hopeful was No Sir, a son of Sortie out of Westy Hogan mare Fib, both of whom were trained by Max Hirsch. Mary purchased the horse from Andy Joiner in the spring of his 2-year-old season and immediately sent him to victory in the East View Stakes. He became the first female-trained entry of the Flamingo Stakes, where he finished second, and was also the first female-trained winner at Saratoga in the Diana Handicap. Ahead of the 1937 Derby, Mary was confident, despite facing a monster in War Admiral.

“With ordinary luck and a good ride my horse can win it,” she told media in late April 1937. “No Sir has worked well since he came to the Downs, and has shown he can go the Derby distance. he has a world of early foot and I think can hold his own in the early stages against War Admiral and Pompoon when the three of them probably will be out there fighting for the lead.

“Yes, sir. No Sir has plenty of heart.”

Max Hirsch evidently did not attend the Derby, wanting Mary to “go it alone.” Mary noted in earlier interviews that while her father asked her for training advice and had at times put his stable in her hands while he traveled, her training decisions with her own horses were independent of his. It was perhaps important to her that she be seen as an independent thinker. The Akron Beacon Journal noted that Max's absence would also let her bask in glory in the winner's circle outside his long shadow.

As racing fans well know however, there was no toppling War Admiral in his 3-year-old prime, and No Sir finished a disappointing 13^th.

Mary Hirsch continued on. She took over the training of Thanksgiving, a promising 3-year-old owned by Anne Corning, after a freakish lightning storm injured several horses in Max Hirsch's barn at Saratoga. In 1938, Mary took the horse to win the Travers in the fastest time since Man o' War. According to racing historian and turfwriter Brien Bouyea however, Mary Hirsch received little to no credit for her record-setting win there, and many papers erroneously reported Max as the trainer.

Hirsch's acceptance by the New York Jockey Club opened doors for others. A 1938 Daily Racing Form note mentioned seven women who had subsequently been granted licensure from New York to Nebraska.

Despite phenomenal success, Hirsch's training career was relatively brief. In 1940, she married Charles McLennan, racing secretary at Hialeah Park, Havre de Grace, Keeneland, Suffolk Downs, Pimlico, and Washington Park. After the wedding, Hirsch turned her horses over to her father and brother and retired. The couple had two children and Hirsch, now McLennan, turned her energies to homemaking. The call of the track proved irresistible however, and in 1949, she returned to the track as an owner when her youngest child entered school. Her father gave her Chinella, a King Ranch yearling whose management Hirsch took on enthusiastically.

There was relatively little coverage of Hirsch's life after that. At the time of her death in 1976, an obituary revealed that she and her husband had bred horses at their Cowpen Farm near their Towson, Md., base until just before his death in 1971.

“Her dad was a tough act to follow,” her son, Charles McLennan Jr., told the Lexington Herald-Leader's Maryjean Wall in 2000. “And she had several brothers prominent in the horse business. It was a man's world at the time.”

After No Sir's run in the Derby, it would be another 12 years before a woman would saddle a Derby horse (Mrs. Albert Roth, as she was billed in official records, whose Senecas Coin did not finish). Dianne Carpenter remains the only woman to have sent runners to the race twice – in 1984 with Biloxi Indian and 1988 with Kingpost.

Shelley Riley remains the best finisher among female trainers after Casual Lies finished second in 1992. Kristin Mulhall sent Imperialism to a third-place finish in 2004 and Kathy Ritvo sent Mucho Macho Man to third in 2011.

It's only a matter of time before a female trainer claims the roses. Whoever manages the task, she will no doubt feel the same way Mary Hirsch did about the profession of training. When asked in an [otherwise uncomfortably misogynistic] interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1937 “What this trainer's life is like for a girl, anyhow,” Hirsch replied with the only true hint the public ever got of her feelings on the 'female trainer' angle.

“For a man or woman … I love it!” she said.

The post A Look Back At Mary Hirsch, Who Opened The Door For Female Trainers At Derby appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Derby History: Ansel Williamson, The Former Slave Who Trained The First Kentucky Derby Winner

Our readers here at the Paulick Report seem to love a good lookback at horse racing history. In considering the best subjects for our 2020 Triple Crown coverage, this seemed like a good time to make note of the crucial role Black horsemen have played in the early days of our sport, and in this series of races. Many of the sport's most revered heroes around the turn of the 20^th century were ridden, cared for, trained, and sometimes owned by Black horsemen whose equine expertise sometimes stretched back generations. While some, like jockeys Jimmy Winkfield and Isaac Murphy, have been the subjects of well-researched biographies in recent years, others may be less known to racing fans. It is clear that their contributions played an essential role in the lives of horses that became influential in American Thoroughbred history and bloodlines.

Today, the Paulick Report continues our series on Black horsemen of Triple Crown racing history which we started before the Belmont Stakes with a profile on Edward Dudley Brown. If you missed it, you can access that piece here.

In a normal Kentucky Derby year, one of the most popular places for that perfect pre-race selfie is the Aristides statue which overlooks the paddock at Churchill Downs. Aristides is well-known in racing circles as the winner of the first Derby in 1875, but beyond this point of trivial pursuit many people don't know much about him – including the role Black horsemen played in getting him to the post that day.

Of the 15 horses who went to the post that first Derby Day, 13 did so with Black jockeys, including the eventual winner. Aristides had Oliver Lewis aboard, who was legged up by a former slave named Ansel Williamson.

Williamson was born an enslaved person in Virginia around 1810. The earliest accounts of his career as a trainer don't appear until the 1850s, by which time he was in Alabama, where he was enslaved as a trainer by T.G. Goldsby. It's likely his experience with horses started well before age 40. Williamson's specialty during this time was training horses for three-mile heats, including the nationally-known runner called Brown Dick.

Williamson was then sold to A. Keene Richards, for whom he trained Australian and Glycera. Richards, who was based in Kentucky, would become known as an influential breeder. Interestingly, Richards was perhaps best-known for importing a number of Arabian horses into the United States to reinvigorate what he saw as an inferior, weakened Thoroughbred which had strayed too far from its roots. The Thoroughbred of the time, in Richards' view, lacked durability and stamina of days past (sound familiar?). Richards' view of stamina was a minimum of a four-mile contest, which he judged the English Thoroughbred could not withstand without injury. The horses resulting from Richards' breeding experiment would unfortunately become spoils of the Civil War, which broke out just after he imported and bred Arabian stallions to Thoroughbred mares.

By now, having developed a reputation for his horsemanship skills, Williamson was sold in 1864 to Robert Alexander, owner of Woodburn Farm. Alexander seems to have had a fondness for Williamson before this, naming a colt Ansel after him in 1856. While at Woodburn, Williamson trained Asteroid, who was one of the most successful racehorses of his day, undefeated in 12 starts and earner of $9,700 by the time of his retirement.

Of course, Williamson made the move to Woodburn in the thick of the Civil War, when both the Confederate and Union armies were constantly in search of horses. According to Katherine Mooney's 'Race Horse Men,' Southern Thoroughbred owners were particularly nervous throughout this period, as horses were generally perceived as symbols of the Confederacy, making them attractive trophies for Union forces.

Writings from the period recall one nighttime raid on Woodburn by Confederate guerrilla Bill Quantrill, who rode with his men to the door and demanded horses. It seemed Quantrill was familiar with racing and with Woodburn, because he began requesting specific animals. Williamson negotiated with Quantrill in the dark and when the soldier requested Asteroid, quick-thinking Williamson was able to pull a young horse from a nearby stall who, under the cover of night, looked passable for Asteroid. Although Quantrill made off with 15 of Alexander's runners, he didn't get the stable's biggest star.

What Williamson may have felt in those moments, or indeed his feelings on any part of his career, is mostly absent from available historical accounts, which was true for many of the period's Black horsemen. There are small glimpses into the personalities of some, with jockeys more commonly being described in detail than trainers. In fact, their being noted at all was offensive to some turf devotees after their emancipation.

An artist's depiction of Aristides

“Freedom was a daily series of tiny revolutions,” Mooney wrote in 'Race Horse Men.' “The world had fundamentally changed, as the Spirit of the Times impatiently reminded its readers, after the magazine received a few letters from racing enthusiasts uncomfortable with Black competitors. Their scruples were ridiculous, the Spirit scoffed. 'Does any man with a pennyweight of brains think the less of Charles Littlefield or Gilpatrick because they ride against Abe or Albert or Alexander's Dick?' Between the rails of the racetrack, at least, Black men were to be the acknowledged equals of white ones.”

After the Civil War, this designation came in one small way to Williamson, who took his last name upon being granted his freedom. Many Black jockeys and trainers, like those noted in the quote from the Spirit of the Times, were identified only by their first name, but the Spirit printed Williamson's full name along with his horse's entries, just as it did for white trainers.

One account recalls a Spirit reporter rushing over to Abe Hawkins, the most famous of the very first well-known Black jockeys, to shake his hand in the crowd at the Jersey Derby. It seemed that by the end of the war, those who knew horses respected the immense talent of Black horsemen, even if they couldn't see them as equal people.

Williamson worked for Alexander after emancipation, and later went to train for H.P. McGrath of McGranthiana Farm. Williamson wasn't the only former Alexander employee who ended up at McGranthiana – Edward Dudley Brown, eventual trainer of Ben Brush and Plaudit, also worked there. It was common then, as it is now, for trainers and riders to mentor each other, and it seems Williamson nurtured Brown's early career as a rider. Brown began as a jockey before he was a trainer, and presumably his association with Williamson continued to benefit him when he transitioned to training. Brown mentored William Walker, the Black jockey who rode Baden Baden to victory in the Derby when he was still a teenager.

“In freedom, older men could pass on their skills to younger ones and hope to see privilege and experience accrue increasing rewards over the generations,” wrote Mooney. “Free men could afford to think of themselves as friends, colleagues, and mentors, as members of a group governed by more than individual interest.

“Williamson and others with insider knowledge also tried to take care of Black horsemen outside their immediate circle. Black men laid their money down at the betting windows with assurance, because they had inside information that had come from African American trainers and jockeys.”

When Williamson brought Aristides to the post at Churchill (then called the Louisville Jockey Club), the horse was not expected to win. Aristides had been entered as a pacesetter for McGrath's other runner, Chesapeake. He was small, and he was a front-runner in what was then a 1 ½-mile race.

Lewis took Aristides to the lead as he'd been instructed by McGrath, maintaining good position and a little surprised that after half a mile he'd had no challengers. Chesapeake, who had broken poorly, was no threat. Legend has it Lewis could be seen looking around, somehow spotting McGrath in a crowd reported to number 10,000, and hearing McGrath call out “Go on!” Lewis slipped the reins and on Aristides went, down the stretch and into history.

Williamson's name appears in relatively few modern books on Derby history outside of a passing mention in a table of past winners. In one, it's misspelled as Ansel Williams in both the index and his single mention in the entirety of the main text – an insult if ever there was one. Most racing historians would say however that his legacy wasn't really Aristides so much as the superstar Asteroid, who made his name known far and wide, to people he'd never met. His mark on the sport also includes Tom Bowling, Merrill, Virgil, Aaron Pennington, Susan Ann and yes, — Chesapeake. As a trainer, he won the Belmont, Travers, Jerome, Phoenix, and the Withers.

Williamson was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1998.

The post Derby History: Ansel Williamson, The Former Slave Who Trained The First Kentucky Derby Winner appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post